A Song Of Ice, Fire, And Pretty Much Everything Else

WARNING: This piece refers to a few loose plot points of A Song Of Ice And Fire that have not yet made it to Game Of Thrones.

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This week’s episode of Game of Thrones ended with a song: ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair’, performed by The Hold Steady.

It’s the second song the series has commissioned for its end credits, after ‘The Rains of Castamere’ by the National closed last season’s spectacular ninth episode, ‘Blackwater’.

There are 50 songs mentioned in the original books by George RR Martin (not counting the eponymous ‘Song Of Ice And Fire’). They’re one of the things that make his fictional world so rich and enjoyable. So settle in *plucks at harp strings* while I fangirl out…

A Song Of Ice, Fire, And Pretty Much Everything Else:

Just as in medieval Britain, Westerosi songs are performed by professional bards at ceremonial occasions and sung by smallfolk and soldiers in taverns and brothels. They’re used to woo the ladies, and as political propaganda and satire, and range from religious hymns (‘Maiden, Mother and Crone’, ‘The Song of the Seven’) to raucous drinking songs favoured by King Robert Baratheon (‘A Cask of Ale’, ‘Fifty-Four Tuns’), to gruesome reaving songs (‘Steel Rain’, ‘The Bloody Cup’) sung by the Iron Islanders.

Some are romances retelling old Westerosi stories, much like real-life medieval chivalric poetry. It’s a mark of Sansa Stark’s teenage innocence that she adores the story of the knight-fool Florian, who meets his lady love Jonquil as she bathes with her sisters – which is alluded to in ‘Six Maids In A Pool’. But Jaime Lannister finds black humour in such romance when passing through the town of Maidenpool as Brienne of Tarth’s prisoner. The pool that gives the town its name is choked with rotting corpses, and Jaime bursts into sarcastic song: “Six maids there were in a spring-fed pool…”

‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair’ is a rather bawdy song about a mismatched couple (“He licked the honey from her hair”). It’s an important motif in the series. A bear is the sigil of House Mormont, and Ser Jorah Mormont is in love with Daenerys Targaryen, whose family is known for their fair skin and hair.

In an ironic twist, the mannish Brienne is Jaime’s ‘bear’ as she rescues and redeems him, coming to fascinate him. And it’s the brusque, disfigured Sandor Clegane, known as the Hound, who rescues Sansa from Joffrey’s abuse and from attempted rape in King’s Landing – not a chivalrous knight like Ser Loras Tyrell.

Other songs are hagiographies of Westerosi heroes. For instance, ‘A Thousand Eyes, and One’ is about Lord Brynden ‘Bloodraven’ Rivers, a Targaryen bastard and legendary warrior who lost an eye fighting his brother but, as Hand of the King, maintained an army of spies. (Fan theory: Bloodraven may be the three-eyed raven Bran Stark sees in his dreams.)

New songs are also commissioned to suck up to powerful families. ‘A Rose of Gold’ celebrates Margaery Tyrell’s betrothal to King Joffrey; the sigil of House Tyrell is a golden rose on a green field. And ‘Wolf in the Night’ brags about Robb Stark’s crushing victory over the Lannisters at the Battle of Oxcross: “And the stars in the night were the eyes of his wolf, and the wind itself was their song.”

A Song Of Not Fucking With Tywin Lannister:

Which brings me to ‘The Rains of Castamere’. Narrating how the teenage Tywin Lannister completely annihilated the disloyal Reyne family and destroyed Castamere, their hall, the song works as a not-so-veiled threat. As they say, a Lannister always pays his debts.

House Reyne’s sigil was a red lion on a silver field, as opposed to House Lannister’s gold lion on a red field. Hence Lord Reyne’s arrogant trash-talking in the song:

And who are you, the proud lord said,

that I must bow so low?

Only a cat of a different coat,

That’s all the truth I know.

In a coat of gold or a coat of red,

a lion still has claws,

And mine are long and sharp, my lord,

as long and sharp as yours.

 

But Tywin has the last laugh:

And so he spoke, and so he spoke,

that lord of Castamere,

But now the rains weep o’er his hall,

with no one there to hear.

This song has people so shit-scared that the Lannisters can keep their allies in line simply by sending an envoy to sing it. Mark my words, it will reappear in season three episode nine, ‘The Rains of Castamere’. If you’ve read the books, you’ll know it heralds the Red Wedding, which is based on a real-life Scottish event known as the Black Dinner.

At that 1440 feast, a black bull’s head – the symbol of death – was served. At the Red Wedding, musicians begin playing ‘The Rains of Castamere’ in what will likely be the series’ most gory montage since ‘Blackwater’ in season two.

A Song Of Duelling Versions:

We first hear ‘The Rains of Castamere’ whistled by Tyrion Lannister in episode 1 of season two, but it’s his pet sellsword, Bronn, who gives us the TV series’ first full rendition:

The music to Martin’s words was written by the series soundtrack composer Ramin Djawadi. While I hated The National’s dreary performance, it’s actually not a bad tune, and there are lots of YouTube covers to explore. I quite like this a cappella version by Hawthorn and Lewis Fitzjohn, which interpolates the Game Of Thrones theme:

The TV series version may now be canonical, but fans have been writing their own tunes for a while now. Douglas Harrison got permission from Martin in 2009 to compose and upload his own version, which he did in 2011. It’s actually striking how similar its chords and general mood are to Djawadi’s TV version.

Djawadi’s take on ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair’ actually works really well in the episode, where Roose Bolton’s men bawl it as they roam through the forests. However, the Hold Steady version that closed out this week’s episode is truly horrible. Here’s another horrible version along those lines, by French-Canadian Celtic punk band Irish Moutarde.

These renditions reveal the simplistic way some contemporary viewers interpret Game of Thrones’ medievalism: as an invitation for greasy thigh-slapping and tankard-hoisting. It’s possible to imagine the songs in ways that are sympathetic to in-universe events and mythologies, and also to real historical musical genres and practices.

With this in mind, Chris Simmonds and Glenn McAndrew, who are recording Six Songs from Seven Kingdoms under the name Tall Like Tyrion, have a vastly superior ‘Bear and the Maiden Fair’. It captures the playful spirit of the song in a rather fey, folky way that they compare to “Dornish bards sipping sweet wine and eating grapes”.

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Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She is the founding editor of online pop-culture magazine The Enthusiast and the national film editor of the Thousands network of city guides. Her debut book, Out of Shape: Debunking Myths about Fashion Sizing and Fit, will be published in June 2013 by Affirm Press.