The were-wood hypothesis

[Ckram]

I was doing a search about language in ASOIAF when I came across this:

"The mysterious ‘Weirwood trees’ are at the heart of the religion (known as ‘the Old Gods’) still present in the north of Westeros with their sap-bleeding faces linking them to the supernatural or religious. The weir- prefix could be an echo of weirwolf (an alternate spelling of werewolf, dating back to 1818)" -- https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/04/03/the-language-of-game-of-thrones/

I did some research and found that the "were" on "werewolf" is old english for "man" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/werewolf).

So, dear native english speakers: Is this a thing? Or would it be nonsensical to even wonder if the weirwood could be some kind of "lycanthrope" trees (grammatically speaking, of course)?

[SiSt]

Non-native speaker here, but this seems likely to be a thing... And has probably been covered several times over in ancient (forum) times.

Weir as in were, as these are literally trees with people in them.

Weir as in fishing weir, a thing that captures, keeps, divides, a fencelike structure. Also known as a fishgarth, which leads to Garth the green, greenseers etc. @LmL has done extensive theorizing on this stuff.

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

Native English speaker. Yes Weir/Were is an old word for man and is where we get werewolf etc from so weirwood means man tree and the tree's literally have men; people, in them as we learn in the books via Bran meeting Bloodraven and the CotF. 

[kissdbyfire]

Also, Martin, a dead-header, said it's a homage.

[Ckram]

@SiSt, @The Weirwoods Eyes, @kissdbyfire, thanks for the answers. I was well aware of the meaning of "weir" as in "dam." In the books translated into my language the name wierwood is something like damwood, and I consider it a successful translation case.

However, I am trying to focus on the other meaning of the expression, in the sense that "weirwood = werewood" would imply that white trees could have shapeshifting habilities, such as a werewolf or lychanthrope.

As a non-native speaker, I do not usually bet that the solutions to the book mysteries are hidden behind English ambiguities, wordplays, and puns. They may be, I just do not like the idea they are - especially since foreign versions would never succeed make a satisfactory translation. However, in this case, the unfolding is indeed interesting, regardless of the linguistic question.

In fact, if weirwood are lycanthrope plants, it would mean that they once had the human form, or even that it has the ability to take human form even now.

As for the first scenario, I have in mind a South American indigenous legend about a species of tree that would have first sprouted from the body of a woman murdered for having relations with a warrior from an enemy tribe.

As for the second scenario, I imagine that a weirwood that takes the human form would be a kind of monstrous hecatoncheir, or a single human body with thousands of minds.

Following this same line of thinking, I wonder if martial pines and sentinel trees also would not be plants capable of assuming a mammalian form, or even if they were people in the past and now are "resting" in a tree shape.

In short, it leads me to think the Old Gods may actually have existed and become trees. And that the green men of the Isle of Faces may have turned into the very weirwoods on the island, but can come back to human if somebody or something "wakes" them.

[Lollygag]

I'm a native speaker and it looks right to me. I'm not sure about Lycanthrope trees though. Lycan is wolf and I don't think we have wolf trees yet though I can see it maybe coming up later. Dogs are linked to trees as markers of territory. I heard a bad McCain joke the other day about this: How hot is it? It's so hot that the trees chase the dogs.

 

Another fun thing: in the horror genre, werewolves and vampires are always at odds with each other. The Starks are connected to werewolf myth, and their (assumed) opposition is the Targaryens who are linked to vampires. Vlad the Impaler was the first vampire according to myth. Another name was Vlad Dracul, or Vlad the Dragon, which became the origin of Dracula. Targs are pale and beautiful which vampires often are.

The myths are somewhat mixed up in ASOIAF though. The werewolf Starks are linked to cold, dead, stonemen lying in wait in crypts and the man trees are fond of blood. The north is the source of the long night. The Starks are linked to iciness and cold like the vampire.

The vampire Targs get their dragons from the moon according to myth much like how the werewolf in myth hatches from the man in the moonlight. While the werewolf Starks of this generation are strongly linked to their wolf, they’re a unique case. It’s the vampire Targs who are more consistently connected to their animal dragon, with some Targs thinking they can literally transform into them like a man turns into a wolf. The moon causes the werewolf to turn, the moon is connected to madness and it’s the vampire Targs who struggle with madness. They sometimes birth half dragon, half man babies.

 

 

[Loose Bolt]

For some reason every time I read about Ramsey Snow I start thinking about story of Rumpelstiltskin.

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

There are loads of real world myth, fairy tale, and folk lore connections in ASOIAF and yes I'm afraid there are a fair amount of things which play on the English language which must get lost in translations. Which is a shame for non English speakers. 

I personally think the were in weirwood refers only to the seers who are living underneath the tree's. As Bran is now. I believe though that there has been some discussion in the past regarding the tree's and some sort of sentence. I want to tag @Seams as I think at the back of my murky brain they were involved in that thread. But even if that is a trick of my memory you'll get some interesting discussion regarding words and word play.     

[Rufus Snow]

6 minutes ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

There are loads of real world myth, fairy tale, and folk lore connections in ASOIAF and yes I'm afraid there are a fair amount of things which play on the English language which must get lost in translations. Which is a shame for non English speakers. 

Word-play is always difficult to translate, although it helps if the languages in question are related or have similar habits of loanwords. We tend to underestimate how much of English is actually 'borrowed' in the first place, but even so, translation of basic text without any wordplay is hard enough. The same concepts don't always exist in different languages, and to be frank, not all translators have the same level of ability. I've seen some very clunky work, which clearly hasn't dug into the 'soul' of the original, so you can have translations which may be 'accurate', but they're not 'faithful', so to speak.

But that said, I'm sure George had the relationship of 'weir' and 'were' in mind here - it stirs up the whole nexus of Northern magic, the links between men and other species, and speaks to me of ancient shamanic transitions and spirit guides and so on. The trees seem to provide a more persistent version of the 'second life' experienced by wargs, so the connection is intended, I'm sure.

On 8/31/2018 at 6:49 AM, Ckram said:

Or would it be nonsensical to even wonder if the weirwood could be some kind of "lycanthrope" trees (grammatically speaking, of course)?

Well, I might go for something more like 'sylvanthrope' or 'xylanthrope', but no, not nonsense in principle.

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

2 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

But that said, I'm sure George had the relationship of 'weir' and 'were' in mind here - it stirs up the whole nexus of Northern magic, the links between men and other species, and speaks to me of ancient shamanic transitions and spirit guides and so on. The trees seem to provide a more persistent version of the 'second life' experienced by wargs, so the connection is intended, I'm sure.

I'm absolutely certain that the connection is intended.  

[Rufus Snow]

.... oh, and forgot to add:

there may also be an intended echo of 'weird' here as well. Common modern usage being 'strange' or 'uncanny', but derived from the Old English 'wyrd', meaning 'fate' or 'destiny', pulled in from our Germanic roots.

[Ckram]

1 hour ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

I personally think the were in weirwood refers only to the seers who are living underneath the tree's.

I see.

59 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

'sylvanthrope'

That's nice.

[Seams]

6 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

As Bran is now. I believe though that there has been some discussion in the past regarding the tree's and some sort of sentence. I want to tag @Seams as I think at the back of my murky brain they were involved in that thread. But even if that is a trick of my memory you'll get some interesting discussion regarding words and word play.     

I wasn't directly involved in the discussion but I think the "weir = fish trap" discussion, referenced in another comment, may have been what you remember. Or there may have been another discussion I missed altogether. Or - very likely - one I have forgotten in my muddle memories of old theories and their many tangents.

In addition to the possibilities already listed - "were = man" and "weir = fish trap" and the common root word in "werewolf" - I could see GRRM possibly adding a layer of meaning by using "were" to allude to the past tense of the verb "is" or "are". I've seen a number of discussions or inquiries about Bran as a possible time traveler and GRRM may be teasing that possibility by giving Bran a special relationship to the trees that experience time in a different way than humans experience it. Bran can see into the past by sharing consciousness with the "were" wood that retains access to things that happened in the past.

There is some rapid-fire wordplay in The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, when the ghouls sense the nearby presence of a werewolf. Gaiman is careful throughout the book to avoid direct references to ghosts, vampires and the werewolf, so the wordplay is a useful hint to the reader that helps to make sense of later events:

... they were at the graveyard wall, and they went up it like squirrels up a tree, and they sniffed the air.

"Ware dog," said the Duke of Westminster.

"Where? I dunno. Somewhere around here. Doesn't smell like a proper dog, anyway," said the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

In that case, I think the "ware" is the same root as "beware," and implies that the ghouls suspect that smell might be a nearby guard dog. It is only later, when the reader is introduced to a Hound of God that the "ware / where" pun takes on new meaning.

The past tense wordplay of "were" might also explain why so many of the characters with variations on the name "Will" have not appeared in the books - maybe they allude to the future tense; something that has not yet happened. Everyone talks about Willas Tyrell or Willem Darry, or Willam Dustin or Wylla the wet nurse, but we don't get to see them or we suspect they are attached to larger mysteries that will be revealed later.

"Willows" are also a kind of tree that appears in the books. It might be interesting to do a "weirwood / willow" comparison to see if there is a deliberate past / future allusion associated with each type of tree. Heh heh - maybe "arbors" represent the current tense ("are").

[Rufus Snow]

... not to mention wood/would resonances....

[Darth Sidious]

"Weirwoods are people"  "Weirwoods are people"

They are in every sense mantrees.  Human blood feed these trees.  Blood is the life.  The believers of the old gods sacrificed people to these trees and the Children graft people to the trees.  The trees are made up of dead humans.   The human body is killed but the memory of the person gets stored in the young tree.  The more blood fed to the tree, the more memory it stores.  So the human sacrifices must have taken place on an epic scale when the land was covered with weirwoods.  

 

[Dorian Martell's son]

49 minutes ago, Silver Bullet 1985 said:

"Weirwoods are people"  "Weirwoods are people"

They are in every sense mantrees.  Human blood feed these trees.  Blood is the life.  The believers of the old gods sacrificed people to these trees and the Children graft people to the trees.  The trees are made up of dead humans.   The human body is killed but the memory of the person gets stored in the young tree.  The more blood fed to the tree, the more memory it stores.  So the human sacrifices must have taken place on an epic scale when the land was covered with weirwoods.  

 

If human blood was required to grow trees there would be no weirwoods south of the wall. They grow like normal trees. They are growing all over westeros now that magic is returning to the world. 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

2 hours ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

If human blood was required to grow trees there would be no weirwoods south of the wall. They grow like normal trees. They are growing all over westeros now that magic is returning to the world.

I think the weirwood are a fungal superorganism similar to that one in Oregon that is several thousand years old and covers more than 2,000 acres, only bigger.  The "trees" themselves are only the fruiting body of this underground network of roots.  The stumps still have powers, e.g. Jaime's weirwood dream.
 

Quote

"The roots were everywhere, twisting through earth and stone, closing off some passages and holding up the roofs of others. All the color is gone, Bran realized suddenly. The world was black soil and white wood. The heart tree at Winterfell had roots as thick around as a giant's legs, but these were even thicker. And Bran had never seen so many of them. There must be a whole grove of weirwoods growing up above us."

If the roots are everywhere any blood spilled on the ground where there are weirwood roots to absorb it counts as a blood sacrifice.

Quote

"but the Eyrie rested on the hard stone of the mountain, and no matter how much soil was hauled up from the Vale, they could not get a weirwood to take root here."

It could not reach the main root system and join with it so it would not grow.

 

 

[Dorian Martell's son]

2 minutes ago, By Odin's Beard said:

I think the weirwood are a fungal superorganism similar to that one in Oregon that is several thousand years old and covers more than 2,000 acres, only bigger.  The "trees" themselves are only the fruiting body of this underground network of roots.  The stumps still have powers, e.g. Jaime's weirwood dream.

Interesting idea. We see in Sandor's cave fight that the roots are still present in the south thousands of years after most of the weirwoods were cut down. That is how the network still operates. The Blackwood's tree is always covered with Ravens even though it has been poisoned. 

[Big P]

10 minutes ago, By Odin's Beard said:

I think the weirwood are a fungal superorganism similar to that one in Oregon that is several thousand years old and covers more than 2,000 acres, only bigger.  The "trees" themselves are only the fruiting body of this underground network of roots.  The stumps still have powers, e.g. Jaime's weirwood dream.
 

If the roots are everywhere any blood spilled on the ground where there are weirwood roots to absorb it counts as a blood sacrifice.

It could not reach the main root system and join with it so it would not grow.

 

 

Fertilize one tree and you fertilize the rest.  Like a giant mushroom with roots beneath Westeros.  Like Shiitake mushrooms growing on a log of wood.  What you see is just parts of the whole.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

On 8/31/2018 at 10:25 AM, Ckram said:

In short, it leads me to think the Old Gods may actually have existed and become trees. And that the green men of the Isle of Faces may have turned into the very weirwoods on the island, but can come back to human if somebody or something "wakes" them. 

I think you are on the right track but reverse that, the Old Gods are the weirwood and they absorbed men.  My theory is that the weirwoods originally were only semi-sentient, at some point they got a hold of some Great Empire of the Dawn citizens (telekinetically forced them to crash into the lake, like the Vhagar and Caraxes battle above the God's Eye) and plugged them into the network at the Isle of Faces and this was when the tree was set "ablaze" and became conscious. 

Quote

It was the Grey King who brought fire to the earth by taunting the Storm God until he lashed down with a thunderbolt, setting a tree ablaze. The Grey King also taught men to weave nets and sails and carved the first longship from the hard pale wood of Ygg, a demon tree who fed on human flesh.

"The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame"

These Great Empire citizens in the network are the Norns from Norse mythology who weave the web of fate under Yggdrasil.

My tinfoil is that the Great Empire citizens were genetically engineered aliens and descendants of the God-on-Earth--green men as in extraterrestrials.  Kings Blood is "magical" in that it was engineered for longevity, size, intelligence, and maybe psi powers, and the descendants of the Great Empire are those with that enhanced Kings Blood. 

Quote

But that was in the dawn of days, when mighty men still dwelt on earth and sea. . . .Gone, all the glory gone. Men were smaller now. Their lives had grown short.

 

I also think the weirwood are the githyanki from George's other stories and the Greywater fungus from the Men of Greywater Station

Quote

githyanki. Hrangan slaverace, often termed soulsucks by humans. Barely sentient, malevolent, and potent telepaths, the githyanki were capable of bending and twisting human minds, sending false visions, hallucinations, and dreams, strengthening the animal side of man and warping judgment and reason, all for the end of turning brother against sister

They are never given a physical description but these characteristics match up quite well.

The Horn of Winter "woke giants from the earth" it will wake up the weirwoods who are referred to as giants about 8 times in the text.

 

Also look up Fairy Rings,  they are mushrooms grow in rings like the weirwood grove of 9, and High Heart.  Further tinfoil, there are 31 stumps at High Heart, and 30 upright stones in the Stonehenge circle in England.   I think in George's mythology Stonehenge was built as a cargo cult imitation of the High Heart grove--to try to bring back the magic that was lost.