3.8. Songs, Stories, and Legends
- Giants are said to live beyond the Wall, and consort with wildlings (I: 12)
- Ghouls are believed to exist (I: 12)
- The Others are supposed to have lain with wildling women and brought about half-human abominations (I: 12. II: 274)
- There are legends of pups being born after the death of their mother; it's seen as an ill omen (I: 15)
- The Others are believed dead, gone for 8,000 years (I: 20)
- Thousands of years before, Brandon the Builder had raised Winterfell, and some claimed he raised the Wall as well (I: 202)
- A story of the Others and the long night before the coming of the Andals, and the last hero (I: 202-203)
- The Others hate iron and fire and the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They rode pale dead horses, fed their dead servants on human flesh, and hunted maidens with packs as pale white spiders big as hounds (I: 203)
- It is believed among the more learned that giants are all dead, like the children of the forest. The wildlings claim otherwise (I: 483. II: 381)
- Giants are supposed to be as big as twelve or thirteen feet high, fierce creatures who are covered in hair and whose women are bearded like men. It is said the giant women take human men for lovers (I: 483)
- The children are said to have once called the nameless gods to send the hammer of the waters from the Children's Tower of Moat Cailin (I: 498)
- There are said to be ghosts hungry for southron blood around Moat Cailin at night (I: 499)
- The Children are said to have known much of dreams, knew the songs of trees and the speech of animals, could fly like birds and swim like fish. Their music was so beautiful it would make one weep to hear it (I: 616)
- A story of a brave and clever hero who was imprisoned in a castle by evil giants. He tricked them and escaped, but no sooner was he free that the Others killed him and drank his blood (II: 105)
- Northern songs such as "Iron Lances," "The Burning of the Ships," and "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" (II: 238)
- It is said that the crannogmen are cowardly and fight with poisoned weapons, preferring to hide from foes rather than give open battle (II: 242)
- The song named "The Night that Ended," which deals with the Battle for the Dawn in which the Night's Watch rode forth to meet the Others (II: 242)
- In ancient times, Joramun blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth (II: 276)
- The maesters believe that all the giants are now dead (II: 325)
- Beastlings and shapechangers are always evil in common stories (II: 383)
- Giants, wargs, and worse things are said to live in the Frostfangs (II: 460)
- There are foolish stories which say that the crannogmen have a boggy smell like frogs and trees and scummy water. Moss grows under their arms instead of hair, and they can live with nothing to eat but mud and breathe swampwater (II: 534)
- Bael the Bard is said to have made the song of the winter rose, recounting an adventure in his past. All the wildlings know his songs, which in general have maids falling in love with him all the time (II: 544-545)
- Bael lived in the time of a Lord Brandon Stark (known to the wildlings as Brandon the Daughterless), who had no other children save a daughter. The story has it that Bael seduced the daughter, who gave birth to a bastard son who eventually inherited Winterfell (II: 544-545)
- The giants are said to speak the language of the First Men (II: 544)
- Bael was slain by his bastard son, the young Lord Stark, because he refused to fight his own blood. Because of the kinslaying, the Starks were cursed; the story goes that Lord Stark's mother killed herself when she saw Bael's head upon Lord Stark's spear, and Lord Stark himself did not long outlive her when one of the Bolton lords skinned him (II: 545)
- Giants do exist and are large enough to ride mammoths (II: 561)
- Giants are too thick in the leg and hips to appear as men (II: 561)
- It's said that direwolves once roamed the north in packs of a hundred or more and feared neither man nor mammoth. This was long ago, however (II: 654)
- In stories, giants are outsized men who live in huge castles, carried huge swords, and walk in boots that a boy could hide in (III: 166)
- The green men, the guardians of the Isle of Faces, are said to have dark green skin and leaves instead of hair, and sometimes they have antlers as well (III: 283)
- In the south it's said that Gendel died, as the Watch came to attack him from the north while the King of the North was to the south and the Umbers to the east. The wildlings say differently however, claiming he cut his way free through the Watch and led his people back north into the caves. However, it was Gorne who knew the caves best, and without him to lead them Gendel and his folk were lost. The wildlings believe that Gendel's folk never escaped the caves, but their children's children's children sob under the hills, and are always hungry for the flesh of men (III: 300)
- The wildlings believe that opening the graves of the dead releases their spirits to haunt the world (III: 341)
- The wildlings seem to believe that the Horn of Joramun is buried in a grave (III: 341)
- In legend, Brandon the Builder was said to have had the help of giants in raising the Wall (III: 461)
- The Nightfort figures in some of the scariest stories of the North, although doubtlessly many of them are false. It was there that Night's King reigned before his name was wiped from the memory of man, and where the Rat Cook served the Andal king his prince-and-bacon pie, where the 79 sentinels stood their watch, where brave young Danny Flint had been raped and murdered, where King Sherrit had called down his curse of the Andals of old, where the apprentice boys had faced the thing that came in the night, where blind Symeon Star-Eyes had seen the Hellhounds fight, and where Mad Axe had walked the yards and climbed the towers to butcher his brothers in the dark (III: 624, 625)
- The Rat Cook's children are believed to still be in the Nightfort, hiding from their father (III: 625)
- The Rat Cook is supposed to be a white rat almost as huge as a sow (III: 628)
- It's said that the ghosts of the seventy-nine sentinels haunt the Nightfort (III: 628)
- Seventy-nine deserters once left the Nightfort to become outlaws. One of them was Lord Ryswell's youngest son, so when they reached the barrowlands they sought shelter at his castle, but he took them captive and returned them to the Nightfort. The Lord Commander had holes hewn in the top of the Wall and he put the deserters in them, sealing them alive in the ice with spears and horns so that they could face north; they had left their posts in life, so in death their watch went on forever. Years later, when Lord Ryswell was old and dying, he had himself carried to the Nightfort so he could take the black and stand beside the son he had loved (III: 628)
- It's said that the ghosts of the seventy-nine sentinels haunt the Nightfort, but never leave the Wall (III: 628, 632)
- The legends say that the Night's King was a warrior without fear, and when he saw a woman atop the Wall with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars, he chased her and loved her though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well. He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years he ruled until finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was discovered that he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of him were destroyed and his very name was forbidden (III: 629, 630)
- Some say the Night's King was a Bolton, or a Magnar out of Skagos, others say he was an Umber, Flint, or Norrey. Others still say he was a Woodfoot, who ruled Bear Island before the ironmen came, but others still say he was a Stark who was brother to the man who brought him down (III: 630)
- The Rat Cook had cooked the son of the Andal king in a big pie with onions, carrots, mushrooms, lots of pepper and salt, a rasher of bacon, and a dark red Dornish wine. Then he served him to his father, who praised the taste and had a second slice. Afterward the gods transformed the cook into a monstrous white rat who could only eat his own young. He roamed the Nightfort ever since, devouring his children, but still his hunger was not sated. The moral of the story is that the gods did not curse him for his murder or for his serving the Andal king his son in a pie, for a man has a right to vengeance, but he was cursed for slaying a guest beneath his roof and that the gods cannot forgive (III: 631)
- Legend says that the apprentice boys saw the thing that came in the night at the Nightfort, but afterward when they told their Lord Commander every description had been different. Three died within the year, the fourth went mad, and a hundred years later when the thing had come again, the apprentice boys were seen chambling along behind it, in chains (III: 632)
- Tales have it that the heads of giants have been mounted on the walls of Winterfell in the past (III: 906)
- Tales claim that the Others come when it is cold. Some say that it becomes cold when they come. It's said they appear during snowstorms and mealt away when the skies clear, so that they hide from the light of the sun and emerge at night; although some stories claim that their coming brings the night. There are tales of their riding the corpses of dead animals such as bears, direwolves, mammoths, and horses, and that they also ride upon giant ice spiders. Tales also tell that those who die fighting them must be burned or their bodies will rise up as their thralls (IV: 80)
- The armor of the Others are said to be proof against ordinary weapons and that their own blades are so cold as to shatter ordinary steel. They are said to be vulnerable to dragonglass, however, and fire is said to dismay them (IV: 80)
- The last hero is said to have killed Others with a sword of dragonsteel (IV: 80)
- It's said that in ancient days, men of Skagos sailed to Skane, seizing all the women, killing all the men, and feasting on their hearts and livers for a fortnight. Skane has been uninhabited since (IV: 220)
- It's said that in the past, during long, hard winters the old men who have lived past their years would announce they were going out to go hunting. Daughters would weep and sons would turn to the fire, but no one would stop them (IV: 326)
- Stories claim that ghouls live beyond the Wall (V: 63)
Last revised March 21, 2013
PermaLink