Rare Words and Expressions

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

3 minutes ago, Tyrosh Lannister said:

Cerseis "one good night for one good knight" is one of the most underrated lines in the story ... Although the kettlrblack she spoke to is slow so I don't think he understood.

I won't claim to be an intellectual powerhouse, but even I only understood it after reading your post twice. 

[ravenous reader]

13 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

"Hey-nonny"

This is sung only by one character, Marillion, as Sansa is being threatened by Lysa near the Moon Door. It's part of the lyrics to a song called The False and the Fair. The only other mention of hey-nonny is by Nimble Dick when Brienne is asking him about the fool who has booked passage across the Narrow Sea. But the words are repeated three times in the Sansa scene.

Partial lyrics for the song are here:

The lord he came a-riding upon a rainy day,
hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey...
The lady sat a-sewing upon a rainy day,
hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey.

Hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey.

The lady lay a-kissing, upon a mound of hay,
hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey

A pretty standard bawdy medieval song, with a lord and a lady taking a 'roll in the hay'. Nicely juxtaposed with the horror of Sansa nearly plunging hundreds of feet to her death.

So, as George is a music fan I wondered whether there might be any rock songs featuring these odd words, and sure enough there is one very famous 80s/90s band - Violent Femmes - who have a song called Hey Nonny Nonny on one album. The name of that album?

Why Do Birds Sing?

Well, this is probably just delicious coincidence. Sansa is the 'little bird' who 'sings' for The Hound, after all. But let's look at the rest of the track listing on that album. Again, I am almost 99% sure that this is all coincidence but it's a wonderful little coincidence all the same, considering the chapter's POV and contents:

1.  "American Music"  
2. "Out the Window" 
3.  "Look Like That"  
4. "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" 
5. "Hey Nonny Nonny" 
6. "Used to Be"  
7. "Girl Trouble" 
8. "He Likes Me"  
9. "Life is a Scream" 
10. "Flamingo Baby"
11. "Lack of Knowledge"
12. "More Money Tonight"
13. "I'm Free"

More Money Tonight ...? well Littlefinger does technically get richer once Lysa is out the way, I suppose ... 

Yes, ok - this is probably nonsense. It would be nice to think this is a deliberate sneaky easter egg on George's part, but the chances of that are just so extremely slight. But it's amazing how one can pull connections out of seemingly nowhere with books as rich as these, even if it's just to amuse.

Song: “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more”

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

 

(from Much Ado About Nothing)

 

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more. 

    Men were deceivers ever, 

One foot in sea, and one on shore, 

    To one thing constant never. 

Then sigh not so, but let them go, 

    And be you blithe and bonny, 

Converting all your sounds of woe 

    Into hey nonny, nonny. 

 

Sing no more ditties, sing no more 

    Of dumps so dull and heavy. 

The fraud of men was ever so 

    Since summer first was leafy. 

Then sigh not so, but let them go, 

    And be you blithe and bonny, 

Converting all your sounds of woe 

    Into hey, nonny, nonny.

[Sandy Clegg]

6 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

sing no more 

    Of dumps so dull and heavy

Shakespeare wrote about taking dumps? Well hey nonny nonny … 

[ravenous reader]

12 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Shakespeare wrote about taking dumps? Well hey nonny nonny … 

'll show you." He moved through the garden, gathering up twigs and sticks and shaking the snow from them. When he had enough, he stepped over both walls with a single long stride and squatted on his heels in the middle of the yard. Sansa came closer to watch what he was doing. 
*

 "Why would Petyr lie to me?"

"Why does a bear shit in the woods?" he demanded. "Because it is his nature. Lying comes as easily as breathing to a man like Littlefinger. You ought to know that, you of all people."

She took a step toward him, her face tight. "And what does that mean, Lannister?"

*

And of late he had often found himself dreaming of snow, of the deep quiet of the wolfswood at night.

And yet, the thought of leaving angered him as well. So much was still undone. Robert and his council of cravens and flatterers would beggar the realm if left unchecked … or, worse, sell it to the Lannisters in payment of their loans. And the truth of Jon Arryn's death still eluded him. Oh, he had found a few pieces, enough to convince him that Jon had indeed been murdered, but that was no more than the spoor of an animal on the forest floor. He had not sighted the beast itself yet, though he sensed it was there, lurking, hidden, treacherous.

[LongRider]

Piebald is rare in the books but not irl.  It describes a coat pattern on horses, a horse with a white base coat and black colored spots.  Skewbald describes a horse with a white coat and spots that are other colors, not black.  So, a skewbald would have brown, chestnut, sorrel or other coat color, not black.  We call them paint or pinto horses today, and if the spots are described it would be like, a black and white paint (piebald) or a sorrel and white pinto (skewbald).   A paint horse is generally a stock horse, a pinto is a horse that is one that is not a stock horse, fancy riding horse say. A rounsey is a small horse, bigger than a pony, but small for a horse.  This word is archaic and a delightful word to add the vocabulary.  The horse Pod was riding was a black and white pinto rounsey.     

The 'dance with me anon' is an interesting phrase, as anon is rarely heard in the USA (where I'm at), and I'd never read or heard of it until it was mentioned in Jon's chapters.  Anon means, soon or shortly, and the context of the last anon quote is interesting.  The wilding are passing through the gate in the Wall into Castle Black and when Jon sees the first one he thinks;

"A snowflake danced upon the air. Then another. Dance with me, Jon Snow, he thought. You'll dance with me anon."  ADWD Jon XII 

What tune will he be dancing too one wonders?  

Edited September 10, 2023 by LongRider

[Alester Florent]

2 minutes ago, LongRider said:

The 'dance with me anon' is an interesting phrase, as anon is rarely heard in the USA (where I'm at), and I'd never read or heard of it until it was mentioned in Jon's chapters.  Anon means, soon or shortly, and the context of the last anon quote is interesting.  The wilding are passing through the gate in the Wall into Castle Black and when Jon sees the first one he thinks;

"A snowflake danced upon the air. Then another. Dance with me, Jon Snow, he thought. You'll dance with me anon."  ADWD Jon XII

I think it's a rare expression anywhere these days, but it crops up in literature, most obviously Shakespeare, with that meaning. I suspect it's one of those things GRRM throws in to give the dialogue a slightly old-world feel, like (rather more annoyingly, imo) "nuncle".

[LongRider]

1 minute ago, Alester Florent said:

I think it's a rare expression anywhere these days, but it crops up in literature, most obviously Shakespeare, with that meaning. I suspect it's one of those things GRRM throws in to give the dialogue a slightly old-world feel, like (rather more annoyingly, imo) "nuncle".

Agree, however, I do see it used here on the forums from time to time.

[Sandy Clegg]

On 9/10/2023 at 10:26 PM, LongRider said:

Piebald is rare in the books but not irl.

Piebald takes us to some intriguing places. My dictionary gives its meanings as:

• black and white in patches; motley; heterogeneous (composed of many parts, opposite of homogenous)

Patches and motley carry heavy Patchface connotations, clearly. From Cressen's prologue : "The fool turned his patched and piebald head to watch Pylos climb the steep iron steps to the rookery." He is a fool tattooed with the motley green and red colours given to him in Volantis. Heterogenous, or being composed of many parts, also carries sphinx symbolism  - see the Sphinx thread for more on this. Patchface's supposed ability to 'sing in many tongues' may also be a clue to a kind of heterogeneousness.

Piebald isn't used much. The first time we see the word is with Robb's horse, which is a gelding:

Robb came back to her on a different horse, riding a piebald gelding in the place of the grey stallion he had taken down into the valley. The wolf's head on his shield was slashed half to pieces, raw wood showing where deep gouges had been hacked in the oak, but Robb himself seemed unhurt. Yet when he came closer, Catelyn saw that his mailed glove and the sleeve of his surcoat were black with blood. - AGOT, Catelyn X

(Tyrion also rides a piebald gelding). I've got my own theories connecting Jon to fools, of which Patchface is one, and it's possible these word links all embody a kind of foreshadowing for Jon's arc, post-stabbing. A grey (Stark colours) stallion becoming a patched gelding, the wolf's head in tatters but the boy himself unhurt. These are all strongly symbolic of a Jon in undeath, continuing his story either wighted or as a warg perhaps.

In contrast to virile stallions, geldings are castrated horse, which is possibly some disturbing news for Jon if that also foreshadows his arc. Actually, there is one extra clue connecting Patchface to the idea of gelding, in this scene:

Aegon's Garden had a pleasant piney smell to it, and tall dark trees rose on every side. There were wild roses as well, and towering thorny hedges, and a boggy spot where cranberries grew.

Why have they brought me here? Davos wondered.

Then he heard a faint ringing of bells, and a child's giggle, and suddenly the fool Patchface popped from the bushes, shambling along as fast as he could go with the Princess Shireen hot on his heels.

- ASOS, Davos II

Cranberries are mentioned only once in the whole of ASOIAF, and it is in Aegon's garden. The Targaryen king's fortress. And these cranberries grow in a boggy spot (bog is another word for privy - see my Game of Jons for more privy larks). Which is where Patchface suddenly appears. Why are cranberries significant? Well, it's the bush they grow on rather than the cranberries themselves. Its Latin name is viburnum opulus but is more commonly known as:

the guelder rose. 

An ominous name, perhaps?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viburnum_opulus

So we have a gelding symbol and a piebald fool, who may be a Jon parallel, in one scene. What follows next in Aegon's Garden is one of Patchfface's most famous prophecies, which seemingly brings us right back to Robb.

Hopping from one foot to the other, he sang, "Fool's blood, king's blood, blood on the maiden's thigh, but chains for the guests and chains for the bridegroom, aye aye aye." Shireen almost caught him then, but at the last instant he hopped over a patch of bracken and vanished among the trees. The princess was right behind him. The sight of them made Davos smile. - ASOS, Davos II

The smile at the end sells the symbolism for me. Smiles are often sly hints which break the fourth wall, as I've maintained for a long time now.

If we read the prophecy as usual, then it is clearly a Red Wedding clue. But let's think about secondary and tertiary meanings, something George has been quoted as being fond of. If we take Jon as a fool parallel, then the prophecy might equally apply to him. He is also a king parallel, if R+L=J is accurate. He is also  a maiden parallel, as I have noted previously. Ygritte calls him a maid, he feels nervous as a maid, and he is even a symbolic maid when he cuts of Janos Slynt's head. This is because a maiden is also a Scottish form of guillotine (they actually invented it 200 years before the French). 

And where would one bleed, having been freshly castrated? Why, on the thigh, of course. Now, this is not to say that Jon is heading for a gelding. There are some symbolic ways you could take all this. And the business with chains for the guests and bridegrooms is more clearly related to the Red Wedding. These could well be gardener's seeds that GRRM is unsure what to do with yet. We'll see.

 

 

Edited September 27, 2023 by Sandy Clegg

[Seams]

2 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Why are cranberries significant? Well, it's the bush they grow on rather than the cranberries themselves. Its Latin name is viburnum opulus but is more commonly known as:

the guelder rose. 

An ominous name, perhaps?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viburnum_opulus

There is a plant called a guelder rose, but it's not the same as a cranberry.

Here's what I find about cranberries:

Quote

Cranberries are a group of evergreen dwarf shrubs or trailing vines in the subgenus Oxycoccus of the genus Vaccinium. In Britain, cranberry may refer to the native species Vaccinium oxycoccos,[1] while in North America, cranberry may refer to Vaccinium macrocarpon.[2] 

My guess is that GRRM may have inserted the cranberries here because they are partially submerged when they grow - Patchface has drowned, like a cranberry, but also emerged on dry land.

The most important berries I can recall in Westeros are the berry given to Bran by the man in the glass garden just before he climbs the old keep, and the berry patch where Eustace Osgrey's sons are buried. My best guess is that there is wordplay on bury / berry. The cranberry symbolism in the scene with Davos and Patchface might represent Davos emerging from his drowning, like Patchface did - he is no longer buried in the water and is officially reborn. 

The "evergreen dwarf" angle is probably also significant. In ACoK, Davos I, we get this interaction between Davos and a short statue:

Quote

A weathered little inn sat on the end of the stone pier where Black Betha, Wraith, and Lady Marya shared mooring space with a half-dozen other galleys of one hundred oars or less. Davos had a thirst. He took his leave of his sons and turned his steps toward the inn. Out front squatted a waist-high gargoyle, so eroded by rain and salt that his features were all but obliterated. He and Davos were old friends, though. He gave a pat to the stone head as he went in. "Luck," he murmured.

If Patchface is part of the gargoyle and monster and dwarf team, it might be that Davos interacts with him in the garden because he always needs to encounter a dwarf before going into the Otherworld. He needs the luck.

But I realize I'm departing from the focus of this thread. It would be interesting to have a thread that explores the definition of "luck" attached to Ser Davos.

[Sandy Clegg]

28 minutes ago, Seams said:

There is a plant called a guelder rose, but it's not the same as a cranberry.

It seems you're wrong here, sorry. It is a cranberry bush. I've found multiple sources that provide the name and the fruit as cranberries, and my Chambers dictionary confirms the bush as the guelder rose, which is all we need to confirm the wordplay really.

cranberry bush or cranberry tree noun (US)

 - the guelder rose

And the descriptions I get from garden websites are all of this nature:

guelder rose

Vigorous, bushy, deciduous shrub to 5m, with maple-like, palmately lobed, dark green leaves, tinted red in autumn. Flat clusters of lacecap-like flowers, composed of tubular white fertile flowers surrounded by larger white sterile flowers in late spring and early summer, followed by translucent bright red fruits

 https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/18919/viburnum-opulus/details

 

Edited September 27, 2023 by Sandy Clegg

[Seams]

10 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

It is a cranberry bush.

Okey doke. The gelding theory seems like a bridge too far, to me. But have at it.

[LongRider]

7 minutes ago, Seams said:

Okey doke. The gelding theory seems like a bridge too far, to me. But have at it.

Too far for me too.   

[Sandy Clegg]

24 minutes ago, Seams said:

Okey doke. The gelding theory seems like a bridge too far, to me. But have at it.

I only had the thought based on the name of the bush, but then I saw it also has another name, which makes me even more suspicious;

The Guelder Rose isn’t a rose at all, but a Viburnum. Also known as the Snowball Tree, it is one of our most attractive native shrubs with excellent wildlife and garden value. With showy leaves which develop good autumn colour, large heads of white flowers and huge bunches of glistening red berries, it has a very long season of interest.

https://www.britishhardwood.co.uk/viburnum-opulus-guelder-rose#:~:text=The Guelder Rose isn't,excellent wildlife and garden value.

Snow balls? Now it's getting eerie ...

[John Suburbs]

On 3/6/2023 at 1:25 AM, Corvo the Crow said:

what are some others?

Mute appeal.

Cat uses this to describe Ned when talking about sending Jon away from Winterfell, and . . .

Dany uses it when describing the look of the dead wolf king head in her vision in the Palace of Dust.

[Sandy Clegg]

On 9/10/2023 at 10:26 PM, LongRider said:

The 'dance with me anon' is an interesting phrase, as anon is rarely heard in the USA (where I'm at), and I'd never read or heard of it until it was mentioned in Jon's chapters.  Anon means, soon or shortly, and the context of the last anon quote is interesting.  The wilding are passing through the gate in the Wall into Castle Black and when Jon sees the first one he thinks;

"A snowflake danced upon the air. Then another. Dance with me, Jon Snow, he thought. You'll dance with me anon."  ADWD Jon XII 

What tune will he be dancing too one wonders? 

It is weird that when Alys first says it to Jon she uses it to mean 'in the past':

Quote

"You could dance with me, you know. It would be only courteous. You danced with me anon."

"Anon?" teased Jon.

"When we were children." She tore off a bit of bread and threw it at him. "As you know well." - ADWD, Jon X

Jon even takes note of her use of the word, throwing it back at her teasingly as if to highlight to the reader that this word is fairly 'old-fashioned' even in the world of ASOAIF. As @LongRider mentions, it isn't used in the books until this late chapter in the fifth book. 

Doesn't anyone else find it odd that this word is here used to mean 'in the past' when most of us would only be aware of it (if it all) as being an archaic word to mean 'soon'? Is GRRM, through Jon, asking us to perhaps examine the 'oddness' of this word's usage here? It's not as though GRRM leaves it up for question, either. Alys confirms that she is referring to the past when she says 'when we were children'. The author doubles down on the meaning here.  So I believe this may be a hint that we are meant to ponder more deeply.

Later on, of course, Jon does use the word in its more familiar sense, of the future:

Quote

A snowflake danced upon the air. Then another. Dance with me, Jon Snow, he thought. You'll dance with me anon.

On and on and on the wildlings came. - ADWD, Jon X

The repetition of 'on and on and on' after anon is a further use of the authorial 'highlighter pen' in my opinion. We are supposed to pay attention to this word.

A quick look through most of the popular online dictionaries shows that 'anon' is generally only given one broad meaning: soon, or immediately. To refer to the future, essentially. Yes, there is the other meaning  - as the short abbreviation for 'anonymous'  - but this is not relevant here as we are discussing the 'time' aspect of the word. The meaning of 'in the past' only appears when I use the more authoritative Chambers dictionary, which lists one meaning of anon as 'at another time'

anon  (archaic or literary) 

adverb

In one (instant)

1. Immediately
2. Soon
3. At another time
4. Coming (in reply to a call)

Obviously this is where I get my kicks, so to speak, when analysing ASOIAF. But I do wonder whether this exchange between Jon and Alys, and the weird focus on an archaic sense of an already archaic word, has a further purpose: to encourage us to explore these archaic meanings, and see where they lead us.

Edited October 10, 2023 by Sandy Clegg

[LongRider]

6 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

anon  (archaic or literary) 

adverb

In one (instant)

1. Immediately
2. Soon
3. At another time
4. Coming (in reply to a call)

The fourth meaning seems for important to me.  What is coming and who will dance?  Perhaps the key word in the passage "A snowflake danced upon the air. Then another. Dance with me, Jon Snow, he thought. You'll dance with me anon."  is dance, not anon.  In the Game of Thrones prologue, we read; 

The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

Ser Waymar met him bravely. "Dance with me then." He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night's Watch.

 

It's good to know that anon means soon but also coming in reply to a call.  Ummmm, that's delicious.  

Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, "Who goes there?" Will heard uncertainty in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched.

The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a distant hoot of a snow owl.

The Others made no sound.

 

The Others replied to Waymar's call and joined him in his offer to dance.  Be careful what one asks for north of the Wall.

[Seams]

6 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Is GRRM, through Jon, asking us to perhaps examine the 'oddness' of this word's usage here?

Yes.

6 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

The repetition of 'on and on and on' after anon is a further use of the authorial 'highlighter pen' in my opinion. We are supposed to pay attention to this word.

Also yes. Very much so.

If I'm right that "anon" could be wordplay on "anno," this may all link to the phrase "a thousand years ago," or even ("a thousand years") that was identified as a code phrase GRRM uses to signal an event that occurs repeatedly throughout history or in a cyclical way in Westeros. (I think I'm recalling that correctly.) I tried just now to find the thread where this was worked out, but the internal ASOIAF search engine seems to be limited. I thought the idea about this came from @Macgregor of the North, but I may be mistaken. 

But there may be more than one meaning linked to the word.

[LongRider]

Could this thread be it perchance?  

When in doubt, google.   

[Seams]

3 hours ago, LongRider said:

When in doubt, google.   

I found that thread. It's not the one I had in mind. I did try google, thank you.

Edit:

I think I found it.

This may also be relevant:

The point I remembered from Macgregor's thread was, "On your good "Thoughts on Bran/Brandon the builder" thread, you figured out that the phrase "a thousand years ago" or even just "a thousand years" was a signal that the reader could expect a reference to an ageless archetype or legend come back to life."

Edited October 10, 2023 by Seams

[Sandy Clegg]

4 hours ago, LongRider said:

A snowflake danced upon the air. Then another. Dance with me, Jon Snow, he thought. You'll dance with me anon."  is dance, not anon.

'Dance' is a tricksy word in George's world as he uses it to mean 'join in battle with' as in sword fighting or with combat in general (the Dance of the Dragons). So it's already a loaded word. Battles and fighting also conjure up connotations of 'confronting' or 'meeting' or 'joining' so there are quite a few ways to interpret it.

From a crafty wordplay perspective (looking at you here @Seams) Jon Snow 'dancing' with Alys Karstark might even mean we should create an anagram based on the combination - or dancing of both of their names. Anyone who wishes to proceed down this route of madness can try https://ingesanagram.com or https://wordsmith.org/anagram/

Or perhaps there's another clue - we should combine Jon Snow, Alys Karstark and the word 'on'. You'll dance with me anon = me (Alys) and 'on' .... ("And on and on and on ....")