A throwaway line, or clue about the Hammer of the Waters?

[Sandy Clegg]

Quote

Longclaw is Valyrian steel, but I'm not. The Halfhand could have killed me as easy as you swat a bug."

Sam handed back the sword. "When I try to swat a bug, it always flies away. All I do is slap my arm. It stings."

 - AFFC, Samwell I

I was wondering whether this throwaway line might be an instance of GRRM burying big clues in small moments? My reread has thrown up a lot of these lines recently, so might be worth a longer post, but this one leapt out at me.

So, we are told that the breaking of the Arm of Dorne was done deliberately by the COTF to slow the Andal invasion, but what if this is an instance of history 'misremembering' events? Perhaps the magical 'hammer', be it calling down a meteor or other destructive object, was intended to strike a different target - an enormous, living target? But the bug was not swatted, and instead it hit the 'arm'? Causing quite a sting indeed!

 

EDIT: not Andals, but First Men, obvs. Thanks @sweetsunray

Edited February 3, 2023 by Sandy Clegg

[sweetsunray]

19 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I was wondering whether this throwaway line might be an instance of GRRM burying big clues in small moments? My reread has thrown up a lot of these lines recently, so might be worth a longer post, but this one leapt out at me.

So, we are told that the breaking of the Arm of Dorne was done deliberately by the COTF to slow the Andal invasion, but what if this is an instance of history 'misremembering' events? Perhaps the magical 'hammer', be it calling down a meteor or other destructive object, was intended to strike a different target - an enormous, living target? But the bug was not swatted, and instead it hit the 'arm'? Causing quite a sting indeed!

The Hammer of the Waters took place when the First Men began to cross. So, if it was used deliberately against a people it wasn't the Andal invasion, but the First Men.

 

[Sandy Clegg]

Yes, First Men sorry not Andals.

[kissdbyfire]

32 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I was wondering whether this throwaway line might be an instance of GRRM burying big clues in small moments? My reread has thrown up a lot of these lines recently, so might be worth a longer post, but this one leapt out at me.

So, we are told that the breaking of the Arm of Dorne was done deliberately by the COTF to slow the Andal invasion, but what if this is an instance of history 'misremembering' events? Perhaps the magical 'hammer', be it calling down a meteor or other destructive object, was intended to strike a different target - an enormous, living target? But the bug was not swatted, and instead it hit the 'arm'? Causing quite a sting indeed!

What enormous living target? And btw, the ‘official’ story is that the CotF did it to stop the First Men, not the Andals. 
 

‘D by @sweetsunray

Edited February 3, 2023 by kissdbyfire

[Craving Peaches]

I think it could definitely be a possible backfire or missed target kind of situation, but then what were they aiming at in the first place?

[Lady Stonehearts Simp]

I think the Hammer of the Waters is a myth based on the true events of the Blood Betrayal. Taking from the Qartheen myth of dragons,  and the Blood Betrayal. Dragons supposedly came from a second moon, that was actually an egg. During the Blood betrayal and the AA myth, the slaying of Nissa Nissa/Amerhyst Empress, her scream supposedly “cracked the moon”. I think the “dragons” from the Qartheen myth were in fact debris from the second moon cracking. The debris rained down on Planetos, flaming on re-entry, crashing all over the planet. In the Arm of Dorne, the Neck ETC, and the dust and debris from the collision was blasted into the sky causing the Long Night.

[Evolett]

5 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I think it could definitely be a possible backfire or missed target kind of situation, but then what were they aiming at in the first place?

Perhaps at "bugs" as the text suggests. Bugs sting as much as a swat on the arm does for Sam. Bugs (or insects) are not the most loved of species. They bite and sting, we think of them in terms of an infestation or plague. The Hammer being a last resort against the influx of First Men seems pointless at the time the Breaking is said to have occured. Maybe there was another threat. Invaders that the children (and perhaps even the FM) viewed as very dangerous, as an "infestation" to the detriment of the continent.   

[Evolett]

1 hour ago, Evolett said:

Perhaps at "bugs" as the text suggests.

I just had a look at the etymology of "bug." It may or may not lead to something but I find it an interesting lead worth following. Apparently, the word "bug" was influenced by "bugge," meaning "scarecrow" or something frightening. Some other meanings from the Scottish, Welsh and Old Irish relate to "threat", "ghost," "supernatural being." Also related is "bog," a dialectal varient of "bug" and "bogey, bogeyman, boggart," all of which refer to ghosts, haunting specters, the devil and the like. 

 

2 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Sam handed back the sword. "When I try to swat a bug, it always flies away. All I do is slap my arm. It stings."

So here we have a conversation between Sam and Jon. Jon with his direwolf named Ghost and perhaps connecting to the "scarecrow brothers" that man the Wall to give the impression that the NW is stronger in numbers than they really are. 

But "bug" has also been considered as a root word for "buck" as in a male goat, originally representing a goat-like specter. A buck could also be a stag. Considering Sam's reply, it can also be intepreted as Sam being the "bug" in question. He swats himself. Could Sam be a symbolic "buck" or "stag?" Likely. The Tarly sigil is the huntsman, his father Randyll a martial character. His son Sam is anything but a "huntsman," he's a self-declared craven. As I recently found out, the name Randyll probably relates to Randal, meaning "shield-wolf," the wolf also a fitting metaphor for a huntsman. Sam being craven recalls the deer that are the huntsman's prey. Warlocks bathed him in the blood of an aurochs to make him brave / aurochs - another horned animal.

So perhaps Sam really is a symbolic stag or goat, a horned-lord figure. A black stag? A black goat? Sam being a symbolic stag and friend to wolf-Jon would also mirror the friendship between Robert and Ned.  

In relation to the Hammer of the Waters and its possible purpose as a means to prevent the infestation of an unsavoury species, "bugs" as "black goats" make sense to me. We've met one diabolical "black goat" in the form of Vargo Hoat and know the Black Goat of Qohor requires heavy sacrifices. Perhaps while the CotF had nothing against Garth the Green as a horned-lord, they may have rejected the darker Black Goat variant. 

Just as intriguing is Jon's statement:

Quote

Longclaw is Valyrian steel, but I'm not.

 

[Sandy Clegg]

4 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

I think it could definitely be a possible backfire or missed target kind of situation, but then what were they aiming at in the first place?

Well, taking the Nissa Nissa myth in general terms, saying the "moon was an egg" is essentially asking us to question the nature of astral bodies in the ASOIAF universe. Something cracked, as @PrinceRhaegar mentioned above, producing meteors. But the antiquity of the myth means that cause/effect relationships may not be as clear as we think. If some astral magic of the COTF was used, was the 'egg which cracked' the thing being attacked by them (our 'bug' in Sam's story) or was it instead the source of the meteors which were intended to do the 'swatting' (sticking to our metaphor)? 

Legends such as the Lion of Night and the Black Goat of Qohor suggest a demonic entity large enough to pose a threat back in pre-history. So we may be looking at something of Lovecraftian proportions (we know what a fan GRRM is of Lovecraft). 

So mixed in with all the Nissa Nissa mythology is an entity, let's call it the Black Goat for now, and one form of defence against an enormous entity could be a form of nature magic that is able to manipulate astral bodies on some level. All very fantastical, but we are talking about the heart of the Nissa Nissa/Long Night legend here, so we should expect it to be gigantic in proportions.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Sandy Clegg

[Craving Peaches]

The thing is though, if the HotW was being used against some Lovecraftian entity, the bug metaphor wouldn't really work so well, because in the context that Sam is talking about it, the bug is something small and annoying. A petty nuisance. Not really how you would expect people to think of an eldrich monster. Now if you flip it the other way so that humans are the bug...

[Sandy Clegg]

4 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

The thing is though, if the HotW was being used against some Lovecraftian entity, the bug metaphor wouldn't really work so well, because in the context that Sam is talking about it, the bug is something small and annoying. A petty nuisance. Not really how you would expect people to think of an eldrich monster. Now if you flip it the other way so that humans are the bug...

Well,  OK. But it's likely just one of many metaphors we see sprinkled throughout the text, so I think we don't need to take the imagery too literally. The key aspect is the intentionality of the metaphor. An intended target was missed, and instead hits an arm. At some point we have to allow for poetic license on George's part. Sam can hardly be trying to swat a goat on his arm, can he?

[Craving Peaches]

7 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Well,  OK. But it's likely just one of many metaphors we see sprinkled throughout the text, so I think we don't need to take the imagery too literally. The key aspect is the intentionality of the metaphor. An intended target was missed, and instead hits an arm. At some point we have to allow for poetic license on George's part. Sam can hardly be trying to swat a goat on his arm, can he?

What I was thinking is that the CotF were being influenced by the Lovecraftian entity, the humans are the bugs, and the entity was some sort of nature connected one, in trying to swat the bugs/humans it hurt its own arm. But either way works. We could also take 'bug' to mean some sort of illness... this brings to mind the breaking of the arm as a sort of amputation, but that might be too deliberate for the metaphor, which implies the breaking was of an unintentional nature.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[Sandy Clegg]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

What I was thinking is that the CotF were being influenced by the Lovecraftian entity, the humans are the bugs, and the entity was some sort of nature connected one, in trying to swat the bugs/humans it hurt its own arm. But either way works. We could also take 'bug' to mean some sort of illness...

Yes, the cause/effect relationship is deliberately vague by GRRM so we do need to have several interpretations. A bug as an illness/plague works too as imagery. So if we allow for the COTF-Black Goat connection, we might equally allow for a First Men/Black Goat connection, and in swatting the goat, the COTF would have achieved the result of defeating the Men.

The key element for me in the metaphor is who the 'arm' belongs to, and the COTF go back in history as being the original inhabitants of Westeros long before Men, which makes it more likely that they were the ones doing the swatting. Which means the enormous 'bug' could not logically have been aligned with the COTF. If you simply remove the entity, then a First Men 'bug-as-virus' metaphor doesn't quite fit the sense of bug used in the Sam quote. You don't swat a virus. But again, I agree that this could be GRRM being poetic. It just has a more convoluted resolution to my ears, so I'd go with the bug-as-enormous-enemy metaphor.

[sweetsunray]

30 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Legends such as the Lion of Night

I think the Lion of NIght is the "red wanderer" or what the Free Folk refer to as the "Thief". We are told several times that the best time to steal a woman is when the "Thief is in the Moonmaiden" as well as that Free Folk and kneelers have different names for the same celestial bodies.

So Lion of Night combined with Maiden Made of Light makes me think "Red wanderer" (a planet) in constellsation "Moonmaid".

[Craving Peaches]

Quote

The manticore has a jewel-like carapace, an arched barbed tail, and an unsettling human-like face, malign and black.

I think multiple interpretations are possible but I do believe there is something to be said for the 'humans as bugs' argument. The swing misses the bug because the bug flies away - the swing is too late, just like the Hammer of the Waters came too late to stop the spread of men into Westeros.

[Sandy Clegg]

11 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I think the Lion of NIght is the "red wanderer" or what the Free Folk refer to as the "Thief". We are told several times that the best time to steal a woman is when the "Thief is in the Moonmaiden" as well as that Free Folk and kneelers have different names for the same celestial bodies.

So Lion of Night combined with Maiden Made of Light makes me think "Red wanderer" (a planet) in constellsation "Moonmaid".

The red wanderer is 99% an actual mineral-like astronomical object, possibly also the Red Comet. And the fog of history in ASOAIF means that these names at some point became somewhat interchangeable. Any 'enormous entity' interfering with the natural state of Planetos would likely get a name, be it alive or otherwise. The fly-swatting' analogy purports that there were at least two such entities: one being alive, and on the other (comet/moon/meteor or whatever we want to imagine) being an object in orbit. 

Over the millennia, these two entities' identities and names get confused due to the fog of history, and we are left with what tales are told to us in present-day ASOIAF, plus the metaphors that GRRM sprinkles throughout the text, leaving us to pore over the pieces to work out what might have actually transpired. So we have to take all the historical names for these entities with a grain of salt as the average member of Planetos would likely not have known what was actually happening, living at ground level as it were. So there is a lot of room for interpretation. 

Edited February 3, 2023 by Sandy Clegg

[Evolett]

15 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

The key element for me in the metaphor is who the 'arm' belongs to,

In reality, the "arm" belongs to Westeros and to Sam who swats his own arm instead of the bug. Jon says:

 

5 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Longclaw is Valyrian steel, but I'm not. The Halfhand could have killed me as easy as you swat a bug."

So strictly speaking, Jon is the "bug" in this scenario. The Halfhand could be a reference to the Broken Arm, the arm that was hit instead of the bug. And like Jon who isn't hit by the Halfhand, Sam's bug escapes. 

11 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I think multiple interpretations are possible but I do believe there is something to be said for the 'humans as bugs' argument. The swing misses the bug because the bug flies away - the swing is too late, just like the Hammer of the Waters came too late to stop the spread of men into Westeros.

Agreed. I would also argue the "bug" is more likely to be human, perhaps in large numbers. I mean, Ned thinks of the Lannisters as an "infestation" before the King Robert's entourage descends on Winterfell. 

[Sandy Clegg]

3 minutes ago, Evolett said:

Agreed. I would also argue the "bug" is more likely to be human, perhaps in large numbers. I mean, Ned thinks of the Lannisters as an "infestation" before the King Robert's entourage descends on Winterfell. 

Except in this interpretation, the intended goal is achieved. The goal in your purported scenario is that the COTF intended to break the arm of Dorne. Which means the Sam-bug metaphor has nothing to do with it, as he doesn't want to swat his arm. It's a by-product of missing. Jon and the Halfhand don't fit the intentionality of the metaphor in my opinion.

[Evolett]

13 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

The goal in your purported scenario is that the COTF intended to break the arm of Dorne.

No, that's not what I meant. If Jon is the bug that needed swatting, the goal was missed. Instead the arm (or Halfhand) was hit and the bug got away. That implies the "bugs" managed to infiltrate Westeros.
Similarly, Ned could not avoid the infestation of Lannisters because they were part and parcel of the King's entourage, Robert, the Black stag, for what it's worth as part of my proposed symbolism. 

 

Edited February 3, 2023 by Evolett

[Sandy Clegg]

2 minutes ago, Evolett said:

No, that's not what I meant. If Jon is the bug that needed swatting, the goal was missed. Instead the arm (or Halfhand) was hit and the bug got away. That implies the "bugs" managed to infiltrate Westeros.
Similarly, Ned could not avoid the infestation of Lannisters because they were part and parcel of the King's entourage, Robert, the Black stag, for what it's worth as part of my proposed symbolism. 

 

Ah, ok that's clearer. Let's look at Jon and the Halfhand then.

Jon says that he could have swatted Jon easily, but instead chose death so that Jon could infiltrate the wildlings. It's a segway, or introduction, to allow GRRM to bring in Sam's metaphor. Which is what I wanted to focus on in my OP, as it implies an alternate interpretation of the Hammer of the Waters, one that differs from generally accepted historical fact.

I see the Jon/Halfhand element here as the entree, not the main course, but it may have its own symbolism, true. Besides, a hand is really not the same as an arm, if we're going to get deeper into the analogy. If Qhorin symbolises any geographical area, it could be the Fingers perhaps ... which is where the Andals arrived.