2.9. Songs, Stories, Books, and Legends
- The life of the Grand Maester Aethelmure is written down (I: 72)
- Maesters have written discourses on the changing of the seasons (I: 72)
- Grumkins and snarks are fanciful monsters of children's stories (I: 104)
- Prince Aemon the Dragonknight's championing of Queen Naerys' honor against evil Ser Morgil and his slander is a well-known story drawn from true events (I: 123. SSM: 1)
- It is said that a long summer always means a long winter (I: 175)
- Fisherfolk often claim to glimpse merlings (I: 175)
- A story about a child who did not like stories (I: 201)
- Grand Maester Malleon wrote a ponderous tome on the lineages of the great houses titled The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, With Descriptions of Many High Lords and Noble Ladies and Their Children. The book is over a century old (I: 213, 231)
- Lann the Clever is supposed to have winkled the Casterlys out of Casterly Rock, and taken gold from the sun to brighten his hair (I: 231)
- Lann the Clever and Brandon the Builder are seen as merely legendary figures among those who are more discerning, although Lann is more popular among the singers and taletellers (I: 231)
- Troupes of singers perform the complex round of interwoven ballads named "The Dance of the Dragons" (I: 266)
- The Iron Throne is supposed to have taken a thousand blades to make, heated in the breath of Balerion the Black Dread. The hammering had taken fifty-nine days. The chair still has sharp points and edges, and can kill a man - and tale has it that it has (I: 388)
- White harts are supposed to be rare and magical (I:395)
- In songs, knights never kill magical beasts, they simply go up to them and touch them and do no harm (I: 395)
- The Night's Watch are called the black knights of the Wall in songs (I: 396)
- The tale of Jonquil and Ser Florian the Fool (I: 399. THK: 481)
- Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight (I: 461)
- Books contain stories of brave knights and noble ladies (I: 461)
- Symeon Star-Eyes was a legendary blind knight of the Age of Heroes with star sapphires in the empty sockets of his eyes. He fought with a staff with blades at both ends (I: 611)
- Seeing a falling star is supposed to bring luck (THK: 470)
- A song called "The Bear, the Bear, and the Maiden Fair" (THK: 477)
- Puppeteers do many of the famous tales. Among them is that of Jonquil and Florian the Fool in his armor of motley (THK: 488)
- An old shield rhyme: Oak and iron, guard me well or else I'm dead and doomed to hell (THK: 514)
- A book kept in Castle Black on the Wall, written by a ranger named Redwyn in the time of King Dorren Stark, which tells of fighting giants and trading with the Children of the Forest (II: 70)
- Castle Black's library also contains drawings of the faces in the weirwoods, a book about the language of the children of the forest, works that the Citadel doesn't have, scrolls from Valyria, and counts of seasons written by maesters dead a thousand years (II: 71)
- The Prince Who Thought He Was a Dragon is a gruesome story recounting the death of Aerion the Monstrous (II: 77)
- There is a belief in demons (II: 193)
- Some songs say that Florian the Fool was the greatest knight of all (II: 208)
- Florian was homely but a young man in the songs (II: 210)
- Musicians often play at feasts, using harps, fiddles, horns, and bladders (II: 238, 242)
- Pipers are part of musical entertainment (II: 292)
- Some people believe that the morning mist, as it begins to disappear under the rising sun, are morning ghosts - the spirits of the dead returning to their graves (II: 369)
- Prince Aemon the Dragonknight was said to have a wept when his sister Naerys wed their brother Aegon (II: 432)
- The twin brothers Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk were said to have wept when they dealt mortal wounds to each other in the Dance of the Dragons (II: 432)
- It is believed that a man who slays his own kin is cursed in the sight of gods and men (II: 469)
- Some stories relate that, when given wishes by a grumkin, you had to be careful with the third wish because it was last (II: 498)
- Skinchangers and wargs are creatures of story (II: 561)
- It's said that the Iron Throne can be dangerous to those not meant to sit in it (II: 668)
- A singer once said that all maids are fair in silk (III: 22)
- A story of the three princesses locked away in the red tower by the king, for the crime of being beautiful. This refers to Baelor the Blessed putting his sisters in the Maidenvault (III: 65, 814. SSM: 1)
- Some lyrics to "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" (III: 70-73)
- Some lyrics to "The Dornishman's Wife" (III: 78, 79)
- There are tales of dragons grown so huge as to be able to pluck giant krakens from the seas (III: 88)
- Tales tell of wise old dragons living a thousand years (III: 89)
- Even demons can be killed by cold iron, the singers say (III: 114)
- Beldecar's History of the Rhoynish Wars makes mention of elephants (III: 136)
- There may be a song that says, "When the sun has set, no candle can replace it" (III: 137)
- Stories about knights and their ladies whou would sleep in a bed with a blade between them for honor's sake (III: 169)
- "Two Hearts that Beat as One", a romantic song (III: 179, 333, 772)
- Prince Aemon the Dragonknight is said to have protected his sister Naerys night and day (III: 183)
- A song about the Kingswood Brotherhood, a fearsome outlaw band (III: 191)
- Maidenpool takes its name from the pool where Florian the Fool was said to have first glimped Jonquil bathing with her sisters (III: 235)
- A lyric of "Six Maids in a Pool", presumably concerning Jonquil and her sisters (III: 234)
- A silly song about Big Belly Ben and the High Septon's goose (III: 248)
- A love song titled "Oh, Lay My Sweet Lass Down in the Grass" (III: 252)
- A love song titled, "Let Me Drink Your Beauty" (III: 252)
- Lyrics of a love song, perhaps "Oh, Lay My Sweet Lass Down in the Grass" (III: 255)
- There is an old rhyme known to the maesters in Westeros and perhaps elsewhere that goes, "Bricks and blood built Astapor, and bricks and blood her people" (III: 267)
- Old tales say that Dragonstone was built with the stones of hell (III: 285)
- "The Maids that Bloom in Spring" (III: 332)
- In the Seven Kingdoms, it's said that the Wall marks the end of the world (III: 337)
- Smallfolk and others in the Seven Kingdoms believe in the evil eye (III: 434)
- Dirges (III: 442)
- Various songs suited to rainy weather: "The Mother's Tears", "When Willum's Wife Was Wet", "Lord Harte Rode Out on a Rainy Day", and "The Rains of Castamere" (III: 445, 446)
- Drinking songs such as "A Cask of Ale" or "Fifty-Four Tuns" (III: 486)
- There is a song about Jenny of Oldstones, with the flowers in her hair, and her Prince of Dragonflies (III: 492, 520)
- Amusing songs: "The Name Day Boy" and "The King Without Courage" (III: 497)
- "The Song of the Seven", a children's lullaby, has all the gods but for the Stranger (III: 531, 532)
- No one ever sings of the Stranger, as his face is the face of death (III: 532)
- "Alysanne", a sad song (III: 574. IV: 148)
- "Flowers of Spring", a song (III: 577)
- "The Lusty Lad", a song (III: 578)
- King Daeron I wrote Conquest of Dorne with elegant simplicity (III: 607)
- There's a story of an old lord of House Plumm who wed a Targaryen princess in the day of one of the Aegon's (not the Fifth). He was a famous fellow, for the story goes that his member was six feet long (III: 647)
- Grand Maester Kaeth wrote Lives of Four Kings, a history of the reigns of Daeron the Young Dragon, Baelor the Blessed, Aegon the Unworthy, and Daeron the Good. There are only four copies existing illuminated by his own hand, one of them in the Citadel. Kaeth scants Viserys II terribly, however, as his short reign as king came after Baelor's (III: 662, 664)
- Baelor the Blessed walked the Boneway barefoot to make peace with Dorne and rescued the Dragonknight from a snakepit. Legend says the vipers refused to strike him because he was so pure and holy, but the truth is that he was bitten half a hundred times and should have died from it. Some say that he was deranged by the venom (III: 664, 665)
- "A Rose of Gold", a song associated with the Tyrells (III: 676)
- "Maiden, Mother, and Crone", a song that delights septons (III: 676)
- "My Lady Wife", a romantic song (III: 676)
- "The Dance of the Dragons" is more properly sung by two singers, male and female (III: 676)
- "Bessa the Barmaid", a song with ribald lyrics (III: 676)
- In children's stories, grumkins craft magic things that could make wishes come true (III: 687)
- Some claim that the silent sisters cut out the tongues of young members of their order who talk too much (III: 727, 728)
- There are devotional books of the Faith (III: 766)
- Some people, such as some old hermits, are thought to have the gift of prophecy (III: 770)
- "The Vow Unspoken", a love song (III: 772)
- There's a bawdy version of "Milady's Supper" (III: 772)
- There are books of children's stories, with tales of animals (III: 776)
- There's a children's song about a chicken who dresses as a fox (III: 776)
- Some lyrics of "The False and the Fair" (III: 911, 912)
- "The Day They Hanged Black Robin", a song (III: 923. TSS: 80. IV: 148)
- Spotted Pate the pig boy is a popular folkhero of the smallfolk, who often name their sons for him. In the stories, he's a good-hearted, empty-headed lout who always manages to defeat the lordlings, knights, and septons who troubled him. The stories always end with him victorious, sitting in a lord's high seat or bedding his daughter (IV: 7-8)
- Ser Galladon of Morne is a legendary hero (IV: 69)
- Ser Galladon of Morne, Florian the Fool, and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight all carried famous swords (IV: 69)
- The Annals of the Black Centaur, an exhaustive chronicle by Septon Jorquen of the nine years in which Ser Orbert Caswell was Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch (IV: 72)
- Colloquo Votar was a Volantene adventurer who visited all the lands of the Jade Sea and wrote the Jade Compendium, a thick volume of tales and legends from the east (IV: 76, 85)
- Maester Thomax's Dragonkin, Being a History of House Targaryen from Exile to Apotheosis, with a Consideration of the Life and Death of Dragons contains illustrations of dragons such as Balerion the Black Dread done in colored inks (IV: 76)
- The oldest histories were written after the Andal's came to Westeros, because the First Men only used runes for carving on stone. Everything written about the Age of Heroes, the Dawn Age, and the Long Night originates from stories written down by septons thousands of years later. There are archmaesters who question all these histories, noting the kings who seem to live for centuries and knights who fought a thousand years before there were knights (IV: 80)
- Sad songs such as "Fallen Leaves" and "Six Sorrows" (IV: 148)
- "On a Misty Morn" a song meant for a woman singer representing a mother's lament as she searches a battlefield for her dead only son. The lyrics mention Wendish Town (IV: 149)
- Archmaester Marwyn's Book of Lost Books, containing among other things information concerning three pages from Signs and Portents, a book of visions written down by the maiden daughter of Aenar Targaryen before the Doom (IV: 162)
- Haereg's History of the Ironborn discusses Urron of Orkmont's massacre at a kingsmoot to establish House Greyiron's rule in the Iron Islands until the Andals came a thousand years later (IV: 165)
- Though it's traditionally said the last kingsmoot took place four thousand years ago, Denestan's Questions suggests the true date is less than half that (IV: 165)
- Ser Clarence Crabb of Crackclaw Point was said to be eight feel tall and able to uproot trees with his bare hands. He rode an aurochs because no horse could bear him. His wife was a woods witch, who would kiss the lips of the heads of knights, lords, and pirates he would bring her, and bring them back to life. Among the heads was a king of Duskendale. Ser Clarence would keep the heads in his castle, where they would constantly whisper. His castle became known as the Whispers (IV: 213-214)
- "The Mermaid's Lament", "Autumn of my day", "Seven Swords for Seven Sons", "Her Little Flower", and "Meggett Was a Merry Maid, a Merry Maid Was She" are various songs; the last two are bawdy (IV: 218)
- A song about Bloodraven called, "A Thousand Eyes, and One" (IV: 219)
- There are books with obscene drawings (IV: 236)
- In Crackclaw Point, they tell of squishers, monsters that look like mine at a distance but who have over-large heads and pale flesh with scales instead of hair. The squishers are said to come out at night, padding on webbed feet to steal children for their meals. Some claim they were all killed by the First Men, but others say it's untrue (IV: 284-285)
- Ser Clarence Crabb is said to have once fought the squisher king (IV: 285)
- Ser Clarence Crabb is said to have been dead a thousand years (IV: 291)
- Crackbones, a legendary champion of Crackclaw Point, is said to have defeated a dragon by tying it in a knot so that its flames burned its tail. He was long dead when the Targaryen came (IV: 283)
- Baelor the Blessed ordered Septon Barth's writings to burned (IV: 522)
- A book called Lives of the High Septons (IV: 590)
- Dornish books such as Ten Thousand Ships and The Loves of Queen Nymeria (IV: 590)
- A book about archery (V: 51)
- Maidens - young women who has flowered but not yet reached legal majority, and so to the cultural mindset have both sexual woman qualities but also have innocent adolescent qualities - are favorite topics of the singers (SSM: 1)
- The maesters and the more educated classes realize the world is round, but many common folk may believe it is flat (SSM: 1)
Last revised February 02, 2016
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