Wow, I never noticed that. Vol. 18

[Frey family reunion]

18 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

This isn't some time travel shenanigans between Jon and Bran. This is Bran who has just opened his third eye while hiding out in the crypts entering someone's dream for the first time. 

I think the answer to this is maybe, maybe not.

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“Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him.”

Here we have a Bran who seems very knowledgeable about his third eye, and even attempts to open Jon’s (or perhaps Ghost's).  We also have a Bran who likes being in the dark.  That doesn’t match up with the Bran in Winterfell’s crypts.  That Bran didn’t like the darkness:

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The dark place was pulling at him by then, the house of whispers where all men were blind. He could feel its cold fingers on him. The stony smell of it was a whisper up the nose. He struggled against the pull. He did not like the darkness.

GRRM has pretty much confirmed that he’s going to be addressing time travel through Bran.  I think it is likely that Bran reached out to Jon, not while he was in the Winterfell Crypts, but when he was in Bloodraven’s underground den.

[Isobel Harper]

7 hours ago, OtherFromAnotherMother said:

Good stuff, @Walda!

The possibility of the first Hand to "die" being JonCon is quite interesting. However, I don't believe we hear about JonCon until Storm. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) I tried to find something about this in the SSM but couldn't. 

 

From ACoK Tyrion I (Chapter 3)

"Aerys Targaryen's last Hand was killed during the Sack of King's Landing, though I doubt he'd had time to settle into the Tower. He was only Hand for a fortnight. The one before him was burned to death. And before them came two others who died landless and penniless in exile, and counted themselves lucky. I believe my lord father was the last Hand to depart King's Landing with his name, properties, and parts all intact."

Catelyn also meets Red Ronnet Connington I'm Catelyn II. 

The seeds for JonCon seem to be there, if his personage wasn't to the fore yet.

[OtherFromAnotherMother]

20 hours ago, Isobel Harper said:

From ACoK Tyrion I (Chapter 3)

"Aerys Targaryen's last Hand was killed during the Sack of King's Landing, though I doubt he'd had time to settle into the Tower. He was only Hand for a fortnight. The one before him was burned to death. And before them came two others who died landless and penniless in exile, and counted themselves lucky. I believe my lord father was the last Hand to depart King's Landing with his name, properties, and parts all intact."

Catelyn also meets Red Ronnet Connington I'm Catelyn II. 

The seeds for JonCon seem to be there, if his personage wasn't to the fore yet.

Nice find.

[TedBear]

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"The way their game was played, you laid the log across the water, and one player stood in the middle with the stick. He was the lord of the crossing, and when one of the other players came up, he had to say, "I am the lord of the crossing, who goes there?" And the other player had to make up a speech about who they were and why they should be allowed to cross. The lord could make them swear oaths and answer questions. They didn't have to tell the truth, but the oaths were binding unless they said "Mayhaps," so the trick was to say "Mayhaps" so the lord of the crossing didn't notice. Then you could try and knock the lord into the water and you got to be lord of the crossing, but only if you'd said "Mayhaps." Otherwise you were out of the game. The lord got to knock anyone in the water anytime he pleased, and he was the only one who got to use a stick" - ACOK Bran I 

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"I need to see my men across the river, my lord," Robb said.

"They shan't get lost," Lord Walder complained. "They're crossed before, haven't they? When you came down from the north. You wanted crossing and I gave it to you, and you never said mayhaps, heh. But suit yourself. Lead each man across by the hand if you like, it's naught to me."

"My lord!" Catelyn had almost forgotten. "Some food would be most welcome. We have ridden many leagues in the rain."

Walder Frey's mouth moved in and out. "Food, heh. A loaf of bread, a bite of cheese, mayhaps a sausage."

"Some wine to wash it down," Robb said. "And salt."

I never noticed that. 

[Alexis-something-Rose]

This one sort of blew my mind and I'm probably the only one whose mind will be blown by this. I'm in the middle of writing a piece about Daario vs Young Griff and going through the books when I stumbled upon the intro of Young Griff.

Young Griff's introduction;

"Duck!" came a shout. "Haldon!" Tyrion craned his head to one side, and saw a boy standing on the roof of a low wooden building, waving a wide-brimmed straw hat. (Tyrion III, ADwD 8)

I started wondering where I had seen mention of a straw hat in the text and it was nowhere in ASoIaF. So Young Griff is the only character in ASoIaF who wears a wide-brimmed straw hat. Then I remembered the other character mentioned along with a wide-brimmed straw hat.

Egg. Egg's reintroduction in The Sworn Sword;

Egg took off his wide-brimmed floppy straw hat. Beneath, his head was bald and shiny. He used the hat to fan away the flies.  (The Sworn Sword)

Young Griff or Aegon is waving his hat at his friends while Aegon or Egg is using his hat to wave away the flies. 

These are the only two references to straw hats in all the books that have been published and they happen to reference two Aegons. 

This is the second off-handed reference that ties Young Griff to his ancestors in ADwD. 

[Seams]

5 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

This one sort of blew my mind and I'm probably the only one whose mind will be blown by this. I'm in the middle of writing a piece about Daario vs Young Griff and going through the books when I stumbled upon the intro of Young Griff.

Young Griff's introduction;

"Duck!" came a shout. "Haldon!" Tyrion craned his head to one side, and saw a boy standing on the roof of a low wooden building, waving a wide-brimmed straw hat. (Tyrion III, ADwD 8)

I started wondering where I had seen mention of a straw hat in the text and it was nowhere in ASoIaF. So Young Griff is the only character in ASoIaF who wears a wide-brimmed straw hat. Then I remembered the other character mentioned along with a wide-brimmed straw hat.

Egg. Egg's reintroduction in The Sworn Sword;

Egg took off his wide-brimmed floppy straw hat. Beneath, his head was bald and shiny. He used the hat to fan away the flies.  (The Sworn Sword)

Young Griff or Aegon is waving his hat at his friends while Aegon or Egg is using his hat to wave away the flies. 

These are the only two references to straw hats in all the books that have been published and they happen to reference two Aegons. 

This is the second off-handed reference that ties Young Griff to his ancestors in ADwD. 

This has piqued my interest, too. In an analysis of Jon III in Clash, I wrote a while back:

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Sam wears a floppy hat in this chapter. The only other floppy hat (so far) in ASOIAF is worn by Arya when she crosses from Saltpans to Braavos. When we meet “Young Griff” in ADwD, he will be “waving a wide-brimmed straw hat. I associate these hats with Aegon of the Dunk & Egg stories, who wears a “wide-brimmed floppy straw hat” as part of his disguise while he serves as Dunk’s squire. Is this kind of hat signaling a “voyage” of personal growth? Is it proper attire for a high-born person empathetic to the small folk? Is it simply one type of disguise for someone who wants to hide his origin? After some ironic remarks about Craster’s request for an axe, Dolorous Edd says, “Perhaps Craster would like a nice hat instead.”

There was some additional discussion of straw hats here.

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"Floppy" is a word associated with the "floppy ears" that Dany wears when she presides over the court at Meereen, so maybe straw and floppy are both Targaryen symbols, but Aegon has a hat that is both straw and floppy, while Dany has only the floppy aspect and fAegon, on the Shy Maid, has a straw hat. Is it necessary to have both floppy and straw together for the realm to know peace again?

I would also note that Brienne's hair is always described as being like straw.

[Alexis-something-Rose]

@Seams, maybe the hats are a meeting point between the characters. Sam and Arya end up meeting in Braavos. 

If Young Griff is Rhaegar's and Elia's (which I'm pretty sure he is), then he is descendent of Egg's. In the same way George has YG paddling down the Rhoyne and thrusting him in the heart of Rhoynish heritage and culture in a nod to Nymeria and her gods, the wide-brimmed straw hat sounds like a nod to Egg.

[Isobel Harper]

17 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

This one sort of blew my mind and I'm probably the only one whose mind will be blown by this. I'm in the middle of writing a piece about Daario vs Young Griff and going through the books when I stumbled upon the intro of Young Griff.

Young Griff's introduction;

"Duck!" came a shout. "Haldon!" Tyrion craned his head to one side, and saw a boy standing on the roof of a low wooden building, waving a wide-brimmed straw hat. (Tyrion III, ADwD 8)

I started wondering where I had seen mention of a straw hat in the text and it was nowhere in ASoIaF. So Young Griff is the only character in ASoIaF who wears a wide-brimmed straw hat. Then I remembered the other character mentioned along with a wide-brimmed straw hat.

Egg. Egg's reintroduction in The Sworn Sword;

Egg took off his wide-brimmed floppy straw hat. Beneath, his head was bald and shiny. He used the hat to fan away the flies.  (The Sworn Sword)

Young Griff or Aegon is waving his hat at his friends while Aegon or Egg is using his hat to wave away the flies. 

These are the only two references to straw hats in all the books that have been published and they happen to reference two Aegons. 

This is the second off-handed reference that ties Young Griff to his ancestors in ADwD. 

Brienne has similar call backs and parallels to the D&E stories that tie her to Dunk.  I'm personally for the interpretation that Young Griff is Rhaegar's son, and his similar parallels to Egg (like Brienne) is something I see as evidence of that.  The wide-brimmed hat itself is one call back.

 

Compare this ADwD scene, Young Griff jumping from atop the Shy Maid when he sees Duck...

"Duck!" came a shout. "Haldon!" Tyrion craned his head to one side, and saw a boy standing on the roof of a low wooden building, waving a wide-brimmed straw hat. He was a lithe and well-made youth, with a lanky build and a shock of dark blue hair. The dwarf put his age at fifteen, sixteen, or near enough to make no matter.

With this The Sworn Sword scene, Egg jumping from atop a rock when he sees Dunk...

A crooked path led from the foot of the hill up to the tower, so narrow it could only be ridden single file.

Dunk led the way on the ascent, with Bennis just behind. He could see Egg above them, standing on a jut of rock in his floppy straw hat.

They reined up in front of the little daub-and-wattle stable that nestled at the tower's foot, half hidden under a misshapen heap of purple moss. The old man's gray gelding was in one of the stalls, next to Maester. Egg and Sam Stoops had gotten the wine inside, it seemed. Hens were wandering the yard. Egg trotted over. "Did you find what happened to the stream?"

 

Also compare this ADwD scene, which describes Young Griff's eyes...

Like his sire, Young Griff had blue eyes, but where the father's eyes were pale, the son's were dark. By lamplight they turned black, and in the light of dusk they seemed purple. His eyelashes were as long as any woman's.

With this The Sworn Sword scene, which describes Egg's eyes.  This second scene offers another subtle parallel, the reference to poleboats and Rhoynar Orphans (ie callback to the Shy Maid and Yandry and Ysilla)...

A look was all the answer that he got. Egg had big eyes, and somehow his shaven head made them look even larger. In the dimness of the lamplit cellar they looked black, but in better light their true color could be seen: deep and dark and purple. Valyrian eyes, thought Dunk. In Westeros, few but the blood of the dragon had eyes that color, or hair that shone like beaten gold and strands of silver woven all together.

When they'd been poling down the Greenblood, the orphan girls had made a game of rubbing Egg's shaven head for luck. It made the boy blush redder than a pomegranate. "Girls are so stupid ," he would say. 

[Alexis-something-Rose]

1 hour ago, Isobel Harper said:

With this The Sworn Sword scene, which describes Egg's eyes.  This second scene offers another subtle parallel, the reference to poleboats and Rhoynar Orphans (ie callback to the Shy Maid and Yandry and Ysilla)...

I'm here with you on all of this. I noticed that a while ago, but it's the straw hat that broke that wide open for me. I have ADwD and Dunk and Egg opened side by side to see if there are other similarities. 

It's funny how George seems to have all sorts of Egg references that he is relating to Young Griff like no biggie, isn't it. Even Rolly Duckfield is a guy of low birth that YG gives a white cloak to, perhaps in the same way Egg gives his friend Duncan a white cloak. 

[Jaehaerys Tyrell]

Just scrolling through the wiki and noticed Boros Blount is described as bandy legged. Bandy legged means bow legged, which is also known as Blount's disease. 

[TheLastWolf]

1 hour ago, Jaehaerys Tyrell said:

Just scrolling through the wiki and noticed Boros Blount is described as bandy legged. Bandy legged means bow legged, which is also known as Blount's disease. 

Great! 

Someone pin this thread. Mods please. 

I'm consolidating my never noticed stuff and it's coming soon. 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

The Black Gate weirwood door is based on Emil Doepler's painting of Odin at Mimir's Well  Tree roots in a well, with a giant pale face.

 

George's book Songs the Dead Men Sing features the "La mort" tarot card on the front.  Pronounced "la mor"--meaning "the dead"

One of the main works of Arthurian legend is Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. George is steeped in Arthurian legend, so I think when he thinks the phrase "le morte" his brain would then add "d'arthur" to it.  Lemore is closely related to Arthur.

In Saskrit/ Hindi

Aśarīra (asharira) (अशरीर).—a. Bodiless, incorporeal.. . .3) Cupid, the god of love, 4) An ascetic who has renounced all worldly connections

Lemur means "ghost" in Latin (and valyrian lemurs have purple eyes)

Le morte = "the dead," lemur = "ghost," Asharira = "bodiless, incorporeal" (like a ghost)  Jon's spirit animal is Ghost. 

In ancient Semitic religion, "Asherah is the Mother of the Gods and was said to have borne seventy sons. With the apparent exception of Baal, whose parentage is uncertain."  (I bet she is Baal's mother too)  Baal usurps all the gods, even death (Mot) 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

From A Gaelic Dictionary in Two Parts: under the definition of Eirinn (Ireland)

"Irish antiquarians hold out, with more ingenuity than truth, that Eirinn is a contraction of I-iaruin, the Iron Island; Ireland having once been remarkable for its mines of iron, as well as of tin and copper."

 

The name Damphair comes from the gaelic damhair, meaning "zealous"

 

In the Oxford English Dictionary (1888 ed) the word Greking / Greyking means "dawn" and gryja means "dawn" and krieken means "dawn"  --the whole plot of the Greyjoys being descendants of the Grey King, and their sigil being a kraken came from this entry.  Does it suggest they are descendants of the Great Empire of the Dawn?  Or that they will bring the Dawn?  Or both?

 

From the New Annotated Lovecraft footnote about the Kraken/Cthulhu:

"In 'The Dunwich Chimera and Others: Correlating the Cthulhu Mythos,' Will Murray argues that there is only one creature that resembles Cthulhu, the Kraken, the gigantic sea creature first described in Erik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan's The Natural History of Norway (1755): 'It is called the Kraken, Kraxen, or some name it Krabben, that word being applied by way of eminences to this creature, which is round, flat, and full of arms, or branches.'  According to legend, there were only two such creatures, nearly immortal and said to rise with the apocalypse. 

Round, full of branches, immortal, rises (from under the sea) with the apocalypse.  Called "Krabben" and in gaelic craobh means "tree".  and krieken means "dawn"  --and an upside down squid looks like a tree.

"lesser gods such as the Crab King and the Old Man of the River—to put aside their bickering and join together to sing a secret song that brought back the day. "

The Crab King was one of the gods that brought the Dawn.  And Clarence Crabb was a mythical giant who rode a bull (bole) and uprooted trees and threw them.

 

 

[Alexis-something-Rose]

Because this is the Bael the Bard chapter and there are all sorts of RLJ things happening, and Jon throughout has been playing the beats of his own origin story;

This seems like it could be a hint toward the KotLT:

[snip] On the ground the sleeper sat up beneath his furs. Jon slid his dirk free, grabbing the man by the hair and jamming the point of the knife up under his chin as he reached for his -- no, her --
His hand froze. "A girl." (Jon VI, ACoK 51)

Jon was expecting to find a man under those furs, but instead it was a girl. Rhaegar was probably expecting to find a boy had entered the joust as the mystery knight, but found a girl instead.

He raised Longclaw over his head, both hands tight around the grip. One cut, with all my weight behind it. He could give her a quick clean death, at least. He was his father's son. Wasn't he? Wasn't he? (Jon VI, ACoK 51)

Jon is obviously thinking about Ned's lessons here. You owe it to a man to look into his eyes and Jon did just that and saw no evil in Ygritte, so he let her go. But when we flip this to his father being Rhaegar, stumbling upon a girl who dressed in armor to enter a joust and redeem a friend's honor, then there's nothing evil about what she did. And it's not that Rhaegar would have killed Lyanna for what she did, but Aerys was another matter. If he had delivered her to his father, who believed the KotLT was a traitor, then her death would have been as ugly as her father's.

Marriage tradition with the wildlings is stealing women.

According to Ygritte, Jon stole her, making her his wife. I think that's one more hint that Rhaegar did marry Lyanna. 

[kissdbyfire]

1 hour ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

Because this is the Bael the Bard chapter and there are all sorts of RLJ things happening, and Jon throughout has been playing the beats of his own origin story;

Nice. There's also the fact that Bael was a bard, and one can argue Rhaegar was as well, what with dragging that silver-stringed harp everywhere he went and all. The tale of Bael the Bard is chock-a-block with R+L=J stuff. 

[ravenous reader]

On 10/8/2020 at 5:27 PM, Frey family reunion said:

I think the answer to this is maybe, maybe not.

Here we have a Bran who seems very knowledgeable about his third eye, and even attempts to open Jon’s (or perhaps Ghost's).  We also have a Bran who likes being in the dark.  That doesn’t match up with the Bran in Winterfell’s crypts.  That Bran didn’t like the darkness:

GRRM has pretty much confirmed that he’s going to be addressing time travel through Bran.  I think it is likely that Bran reached out to Jon, not while he was in the Winterfell Crypts, but when he was in Bloodraven’s underground den.

One of my favorite topics, ever since @evita mgfs suggested it! Definitely time-travel hijinks involved, as indicated by the marker of the tree ‘growing in fast-forward’(analogous to that growing/going in reverse in Bran’s vision):

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A Clash of Kings - Jon VII

A weirwood.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

After that the glimpses came faster and faster, till Bran was feeling lost and dizzy. He saw no more of his father, nor the girl who looked like Arya, but a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her. Then there came a brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor. A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. The tree itself was shrinking, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into saplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn. And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them.

Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I think the Knight of the Laughing Tree story was inspired by events in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn.  Tiamak is a marsh man who is small, he lives in a little hut on stilts in the swamp (a crannog), and he is associated with crocodiles, one day he gets in his little boat and leaves the marsh, which very few of his people do.  He goes to a meeting place and meets up with the Northman Isgrimner (Isegrim is a wolf from the medieval story Reynard the Fox).  The marsh lad goes for a walk by himself and gets cornered by three religious zealots who are going to beat him to death.  And he gets saved by Ceallio--the simpleminded mute giant, who is "the Doorkeeper"--Ceallio is actually Camaris--the greatest most chivalrous  knight of the age--who suffered a brain injury 40 years ago and lost his identity, and has essentially been living as Hodor for 40 years  (man who is like Hodor who is a Doorkeeper--hmmm).  Camaris is a close parallel to Arthur Dayne, camaoir means "dawn" in gaelic, and he has a magic sword made from a meteor.
 

So a little marsh man is saved from bullies by someone whose identity is a mystery (to himself, and to others before Isgrimner identified him).  A knight who does the knightly thing and protects the weak and innocent. 

When Camaris saves Tiamak, Tiamak thinks, "A knight. Sworn to, sworn to . . . to save the innocent."

The closest match to that line that I can find in ASOIAF is "You were a knight, sworn to defend the weak and innocent."  Cat says that to Jaime.  And Aerys thought Jaime was the Mystery Knight. 

If a crannogman is a stand-in for the CotF, it makes sense that a White Knight Kingsguard / Other is the one to protect him, as the Others are Snow Knights that the Trees made.  However, leann means "suit of armor" in gaelic, so I don't even know, she is a Stark, so Nights Queen?

The marsh man later becomes close friends with the Northman/wolf man and Camaris, and they go on a journey together.  Hints of Howland, Ned, and Arthur Dayne maybe being closer than we think. 

[OtherFromAnotherMother]

14 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

I think the Knight of the Laughing Tree story was inspired by events in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn.  Tiamak is a marsh man who is small, he lives in a little hut on stilts in the swamp (a crannog), and he is associated with crocodiles, one day he gets in his little boat and leaves the marsh, which very few of his people do.  He goes to a meeting place and meets up with the Northman Isgrimner (Isegrim is a wolf from the medieval story Reynard the Fox).  The marsh lad goes for a walk by himself and gets cornered by three religious zealots who are going to beat him to death.  And he gets saved by Ceallio--the simpleminded mute giant, who is "the Doorkeeper"--Ceallio is actually Camaris--the greatest most chivalrous  knight of the age--who suffered a brain injury 40 years ago and lost his identity, and has essentially been living as Hodor for 40 years  (man who is like Hodor who is a Doorkeeper--hmmm).  Camaris is a close parallel to Arthur Dayne, camaoir means "dawn" in gaelic, and he has a magic sword made from a meteor.
 

So a little marsh man is saved from bullies by someone whose identity is a mystery (to himself, and to others before Isgrimner identified him).  A knight who does the knightly thing and protects the weak and innocent. 

When Camaris saves Tiamak, Tiamak thinks, "A knight. Sworn to, sworn to . . . to save the innocent."

The closest match to that line that I can find in ASOIAF is "You were a knight, sworn to defend the weak and innocent."  Cat says that to Jaime.  And Aerys thought Jaime was the Mystery Knight. 

If a crannogman is a stand-in for the CotF, it makes sense that a White Knight Kingsguard / Other is the one to protect him, as the Others are Snow Knights that the Trees made.  However, leann means "suit of armor" in gaelic, so I don't even know, she is a Stark, so Nights Queen?

The marsh man later becomes close friends with the Northman/wolf man and Camaris, and they go on a journey together.  Hints of Howland, Ned, and Arthur Dayne maybe being closer than we think. 

Nice find! 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Flipping through the gaelic dictionary and found some Targaryen name origin stuff.

tairgireadh means "prophecy", or "prophesied"  (and "nails")  [Daenys the Dreamer][PtwP][Gold of Casterly Rock prophesied to ruin Targs]

tairngeartach means "Promised One, Messiah" (and surrounding words mean "to nail" and Dany crucified people) (also a longclaw is a kind of nail)

tairngedach means "____-bringer" and "lucifier" (solas-tairngedach) and solas means "light, bright"  So solas-tairngedach literally means "light-bringer"

A Targaryen is Light-Bringer.

And for you Tyrion Targaryen truthers out there, nestled in between the words tairgear and tairgire is:

tairgheag meaning "Imp"

The Imp is a Targ.

 

The stuff about nails and crucifixion and the messiah, in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Simon's magic sword was Bright-Nail, and Simon got crucified--died and was reborn and went on to kill the Dark Lord.  Also, in that story their version of Jesus (Usires Aedon, Osiris + Adonai means "my lord" in Hebrew--and Osiris was the egyptian god of death and rebirth) got nailed to /hung on a sacred tree (and the crucifix is sometimes referred to as a tree) and a Red Comet crashed into the tree while he was being crucified.  A piece of that red comet got made into a sword--Thorn.  The sword was shaped like a tree and it was magic and "somehow alive" with a will of its own.  The third magic sword was Sorrow, which was forged by Ineluki in the smithy in a cavern under the White Tower (White Tree  that is a "specter sent from another world"). 

So, a CoTF/sithi smithy forges a magic sword in a cave under a cosmic White Tree; a magic sword gets made by the Dwarrows (CotF-like cave dwellers) from a red comet / falling star; and Bright-Nail was made by the Dwarrows out a "not of this world" boat keel (space ship hull?)   A white tree = red comet = not of this world ship, and it produces magic swords in caverns underground.

The Sithi village in the woods is likened to a vast ship sailing the green sea of the forest, and inside a hollow tree is described as being inside a massive ship, and the Niskies were said to have brought the Sithi from across unimaginable distances in the ancient past and they burned the ships --they were lead by Ruyan the Navigator (in gaelic ruigim means "drive, expel, pull, tear, hurl")--burning tree ships is hurled from a planet and brings aliens from across vast distances.  And I figured out the connection between Sithi and sailing, in gaelic the word sithi means "fairy, elf" and sioth/sith means "unearthly" and siota means "sail"

In the climax of book 3, Simon ignites a pool of wildfire in a cave under the White Tower, and goes to confront the Dark Lord in the White Tower, and the White Tower briefly appears to launch itself off of the Earth.  

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As he stood, shivering and moaning, the sky outside changed,  The broad smear of clouds vanished, and for a moment the full blackness of the sky opened before him, dotted with tiny, cold stars, as though Green Angel Tower had torn free of its moorings and now floated above the storm.

A mooring is used to attach a boat to a pier, so the White Tree is a boat.

 

In ASoIaF, the Red Comet is a "dragon" and a "flaming sword."  The magic sword Dawn is made from a falling star.  Dragons come from dragon's eggs.  Only Valyrians / Great Empire of the Dawn / Dayne descendants can hatch dragon's eggs.  A Targ nailed to a tree hatches a dragon egg --a weirwood comet--a flaming sword.  That is why the Undying wanted Dany.  They claimed that they sent the comet to guide her, and I don't think they were totally lying--I think greenseers really do send comets.

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"We knew you were to come to us," the wizard king said. "A thousand years ago we knew, and have been waiting all this time. We sent the comet to show you the way."

"We have knowledge to share with you," said a warrior in shining emerald armor, "and magic weapons to arm you with."

The Undying mention greenseers sending comets, then immediately mentions magic weapons.  The comet is the greenseer's magic weapon.

 

The title page of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has dragon eggs under a tree, and a dragon and Egg in the tree.--at the climax of the third story, a dragon egg hatches and Fireball brings down the Black Dragon, then dawn breaks.

Castles are sometimes a metaphor for weirwoods, and Summerhall was a castle that exploded from wildfire in a failed attempt to hatch a dragon egg.

There was a myth about dragon eggs or a dragon being under Winterfell, and when Winterfell burned, the tower collapsed, a dragon woke and flew up into the sky. 

Weirwoods are giant stone hands, and Cersei is a cat woman (CotF stand-in) who used Wildfire to set fire to the Tower of the Hand, 

Quote

The tower went up with a whoosh. In half a heartbeat its interior was alive with light, red, yellow, orange . . . and green, an ominous dark green, the color of bile and jade and pyromancer's piss. "The substance," the alchemists named it, but common folk called it wildfire. Fifty pots had been placed inside the Tower of the Hand, along with logs and casks of pitch and the greater part of the worldly possessions of a dwarf named Tyrion Lannister.

The queen could feel the heat of those green flames. The pyromancers said that only three things burned hotter than their substance: dragonflame, the fires beneath the earth, and the summer sun.

The wildfire ignites, and "the Tower went up with a whoosh" with hints of a dwarf Targ being inside it when it goes up--(wildfire is stored in fruit-shaped jars--fruit of the tree).  Wildfire is likened to dragonflame, fires beneath the Earth, and the sun (Dawn maybe?)  Burning a weirwood activates the fires beneath the earth, and it is like the sun. 

The Red Keep is a red castle (with a White Sword Tower and a Tower of the Hand), the Sept of Baelor is a white stone church with seven white towers in a circle, they both have wildfire in caverns and tunnels underneath them.  Weirwoods are red and white stone towers with tunnels underneath them, filled with wildfire.  If Dany sets fire to the wildfire, explodes the Red Keep and levels King's Landing, it is a metaphor for a weirwood launch.  In this way she could obliterate King's Landing and not necessarily be a villain. 

 

In Dany's "wake the dragon" flying dream she bursts into flame and launches into the sky.  Later she mentions riding a dragon and joining the comet.   "If I flew high enough, I could even see the Seven Kingdoms, and reach up and touch the comet."

Maester Thomax's book about the Targaryens is called Dragonkin, Being a History of House Targaryen from Exile to Apotheosis, with a Consideration of the Life and Death of Dragons

apotheosis means "to ascend to heaven"  when Juliius Caesar was killed a few months later a very bright comet appeared in the sky, and they said that he ascended to the heavens as a comet--Caesar's Comet.  And of course, the Dothraki believe that a Khal ascends to heaven as a star when they die.  A Targ/Dayne/GeoDawnian is nailed to a stone tree, dies and is reborn as Light-Bringer, and ascends to heaven as a comet / flaming sword / Dawn

 

[Seams]

21 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

tairgireadh means "prophecy", or "prophesied"  (and "nails")  ...

tairngeartach means "Promised One, Messiah" (and surrounding words mean "to nail" and Dany crucified people) (also a longclaw is a kind of nail)

This is really good stuff!

Some time ago, using the A Search of Ice and Fire website, I did a search on the word "nail" throughout the series. I was surprised at the time to see how much effort GRRM had put into the evolution of this word - it starts out being mostly used to describe pleasurable sensations during consensual sex, as I recall. Then it is used in connection with the way the boards in a door are held together - a normal use of hardware. Then nails are connected with nailing antlers to human heads, the crucifixions you mention and nailing a tongue to a wall. I think the word then devolves again and the connection to violence begins to ebb.

There is a pair of characters named Hammer and Nails in the Golden Company, I believe, so there may be a new symbolism coming up in Tyrion's arc if we see more of that pair. It does seem as if we need to examine Robert Baratheon's war hammer, hammers used by smiths and other hammers in the text to get another angle on nails and their underlying meaning.

Nice work!

21 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Castles are sometimes a metaphor for weirwoods, and Summerhall was a castle that exploded from wildfire in a failed attempt to hatch a dragon egg.

I have been working again on interpreting The Sworn Sword. I think your analysis here may help to explain the burning of Wat's Wood. Thank you!