The specific details of the bards should not necessarily be taken as a literal historical recounting, in details of time or place or character intent. The broad stroke of events however, is assumed to be accurate by most scholars, insofar as collaborative evidence exists suggests the stories memorialized and the people therein did exist in the events as told.
Gather round the flames o' children
Of the Northland moor and fen
From the placid waters of the heated Fever
Where dwell the lion lizards and Crannogmen
In places foreign blood can neither find nor dwell
.
To the shadows of the wall, now no longer whole
But scattered here and there like jagged teeth
Of the corpse of Winter's second night
Pale sepulchers in testimony to the age
When death sought to usurp the living
.
But here now we happy band with light and fire and goatskin
Full of strong ale or barleyed water or sweet honey mead
Children of Stark, Bolton, Umber, Glover,
Karstark, Manderly, Tallhart, Flint, Wulls, Reed
Let us sing of heroes who unto us did life bequeath
.
Listen to the stores that I recall to you
Of the time when death howled down upon the northman
And southern houses full of treachery
With the false gods lusting our destruction
Lannister, Baratheon, She-with-Dragons
.
The Night is no longer long enough to tell them all
And I am old, tomorrow no longer a demesne I take for granted
So let us sing the odes as best we can
Until dawn takes us away again to toil once more
So that those that come after us may sing our song
.
I shall sing of Robb Stark, son of Eddard, son of Rickard
The True King of the North who was crowned
As result of the bastard's bloody deed
That saw the sons of Weirwood
cleave golden crown from golden head
.
I shall sing of Roslin Frey the only of her name
To survive the wrath resulting from her father's treachery
Such that his name was extinguished above the Trident
Powdered snow smothering his flames of malintent
And for her alone a brother spared and a crown of iron
.
I shall sing of tragedy that came before the Night
Of Theon Turncloak and the Mermaid's Tears
Who crossed through the wine red sea
Sacking the handsome city and The Great Chase
Where he was slain in the land of the Andals
.
I shall sing of romantic love
Of Domeric the Flayer and Arya the Needle
I shall sing of brotherly love
Of Jon Snowstark to his kin and king
And Umbermen to one another when hope was forlorn
.
I shall sing of despair and desolation
When on Bear Island every soul
Did pack hearth and home into the bellies of fresh cut keels
Not but a hairbreadth forward from the living dead
Such that linens and brass and jeweled goblets were left upon the beachhead
.
I shall sing of courage
The northern host pushed back against the Long Lake
When at dawn the ground shook with a thousand Ryswell stallions
And from the Haugrs did these happy few descend
The flower of the north to bloom another day
.
Come then my children let us now to song
Of The Ned, last of the First Men
To hold kindred with the Andals
There his watch ends
There his watch begins
Yan – The Ned's Three
Eddard, son of Rickard, child of the Wallgiver
Wed to a lady of southern silks
The brideprice to be paid for justice
For his brother and his father slain
By the mad dragon of Aegon's loins
.
Fair and frigid was his lady
But price paid in need did foster true affection
And bore three sons and two daughters
Even with no mother's love for the bastard sixth
The hold was strong in heart and home
.
As a father so was the Ned as Magnar
And the household of the North did thrive
Under his silent brow the stores and coffers
And armories and granaries and cellars
Did with wool and silver and iron and barley overflow
.
Seven years after his return
The grief of war at last healed to a scar
The Greyjoy reavers took to sea
The Ned put them to the sword
And took Theon Turncloak to hold his father's word
.
To the west a stag killed the sigil'd wolf
Leaving six pups orphaned
Even as another stag rode north
And for love of youthful brotherhood
The omen silenced in deference to serve the southern king
.
The Ned never looked upon home again
Nor saw snow nor saw his southern wife
Welcoming him home from sojourn in the Wolfswood
With but ten and twenty moonturns was beheaded
By the false get of his brother beloved
.
The Ned was not a fool, but blinded by childhood long forgotten
By southern vultures who sulk for flesh
Three yokes he left upon his kindred for his actions
And three blessings did his honest cunning provide
So that all might not be overcoming to the spirits
.
The yokes, of which there were three
Fair Sansa left in the clutches of the rotwombed queen
Jon Snow, left unknowing to seek the Crowman's cloak
The snake tongued mockingbird, left alive
These shackles of the spirit on those left behind
.
The blessings, of which there were three
Arya the Needle, in dead of night with crafty mind
A fast ship to Sunspear with retainers and a purse
Before the Lion's trap was sprung
So that the tale did not die in the sunken, cess-filled city
.
The second blessing, Domeric the Flayer
Thought folly at the time, sent to Winterfell by his father
to seduce sweet foolish Sansa
But in turn seduced to brotherhood
Robb's bloody hand to be
.
The third blessing The Ned himself
His blood upon the false gods pantheon
Did bond northmen with the strength of resin
Of the Yronwood tree and so ensure
His young son need not fear a fractured lordship
.
Fair Sansa watched in her golden chains
As her father's head was taken
On that day her shattered dreams of southern tales
At long last were forsaken
But that is another tale for when we've had more ale
Tan – Domeric the Flayer
Domeric the Flayer and Domeric the Iron Hand
For he who flayed did have his own limb taken
The old ways did not return without a price
And many talents by that path foresaken
Nimble fingers for the harp cut off by thirsty blades
.
In youth's romantic grasp Domeric did sail
Amongst the courtly knights of summer Vale
But siren songs of chivalry cut deep
When bastard brother tried his soul to reap
Seven days and seven nights his father's vigil
.
He woke a changed man though whether came
By poison or the knowledge of the deed
In Dreadfort never spoken and desire for the baseborn brother
Broken, was instead turned to another
Fair Sansa was his courtly game
.
But for his mastery of song and horse
Twas not to Sansa's heart that laid the course
For she in summer's thrall still pined for southern princes
And the harp was overcome for clamors
Not for harps but horns to sound the banners
.
The Moot of Winterfell saw all the North
From Karstark glens to stony Sea Dragon
With one thunderous voice declare
Blood for blood and so the young Stark heir
Did lead a new host south some twenty thousand strong
.
At Seaguard, Arya did arrive not long after
The bloody river reave of River Run
That saw the Lannisters broken on the banks
And Roose the Father taking privilege of rank
To flay the first man since his father's father
.
Domeric took to his new trade
Of making golden tongues wag golden secrets
So skilled at such was he that when the Northern arms
Did land behind the western lines and Stafford caught in unsuspecting battle
His reward a hundred talents and the finest herd of cattle
.
Arya arrived at her grandfather's hold two moonturns after
The second routing of the western force
Before Theon Turncloak revealed his nature
And gazing on the brother's banners did delight
On he who married noble duties with bloody rite.
.
War makes haste in ways such that a year of peace
Is like a single day when blood is shed
When death creeps at the door
The needs of kin and kind do come afore
And bare two moonturns later they were wed
.
She bled for her husband by night
And she bled with her husband by day
The compact of the Needle and the Knife
Matched in all things the Husband and the Wife
And the Westerlands did scream hoarse in bloody matrimony
.
Tormund Bane of Giants took the Flayer's hand at Queenscrown
He in turn first blinded by humiliation
Was blinded by the Needle
And all that would not surrender iron or stone
Did pay the price in skin
.
Hand of the King with one hand already given
[lines 58 to 60 have been lost]
Editors Note: The order of the leoÞ collected in this translation should not be taken as a strict order of events; for sake of arrangement I have (mostly) placed them in some form of roughly chronological order, but this cannot be taken for granted. Even within a single leoÞ events can drastically shift across time. In Yan for instance, events broadly cover a fifteen year period from the end of Robert's Rebellion, briefly mentioning the Greyjoy Rebellion, and the without a second thought jump to events at his death approximately a decade years afterward. Tan, verse eleven, recollects events that took place years after the early campaigns in the westerlands. And while we sadly do not know the specifics of verse twelve, unless the verse is concerned entirely around jokes about being the Hand of the King while only having one hand, we can assume the last verse references events during or after the Long Night, when the Northern system of rule by Kingly veto over the Moot was forced to give way to a more bureaucratic form of government that mimicked (if never completely copying) the southern style.
As mentioned above, the leoÞ would rarely be sung chronologically, but rather in line with the theme of a particular evening's entertainment. We can safely assume the material was well known to all participants that there would strictly speaking be no need to explicitly lay out the order of events each and every time; Lord Eddard Stark's participation in Robert's Rebellion only to be betrayed by Robert's son, Prince Joffrey ('the bastard', as was alleged by several contemporary lords, not all of them northern) would have been well known, and likely would have fallen in the middle an evening's festivities, when the call for wild songs had died down and ale had taken its toll such that listeners needed a song that did not require much thought.
For the novice historian, what can be deduced thus far is as follows: The introduction is a fairly standard format for beginning an evening's storytelling, though the particulars varied by bard, by place of telling, and by time. Beyond a general declaration to the audience about what one intends to sing about, and gratuitously including the names of the clans and houses of any relevant patron, two things are of interest to us. One, even by the time of these leoÞ, Danaerys Targaryen was still explicitly not mentioned by name, but by epithet, She-with-Dragons.
Second, that while lines three through six bound 'The North' as those lands between the watershed of The Fever and the remnants of The Wall, line thirty-three makes a clear distinction for the first time in Northern prose as 'above the Trident' being a distinct people and space as those 'below the Trident'. It is unclear if this distinction existed with the time of the narrative, as King Stark's uncle retained the position of 'Warden of the River Marches' even after much of the Riverlands were removed from Stark's demesne. As such, the leoÞ may serve as a historical marker for when the northwestern Riverlands, a roughly triangular shaped region bounded by the Red and Green Forks down to The Trident, were considered to be part of the North Proper and not a breakaway region of a southern kingdom.
Yan is fairly straightforward and is a well known enough story that little more needs to be said, save for the blessings and the curses. Lord Stark when he took up the position of Hand of The King to Robert Baratheon, brought with him both his daughters to King's Landing. Sansa, the elder, was to marry Prince Joffrey. No reason is given as to why the younger daughter Arya came along, and the lack of any records of her presence at that time suggests she was not there as court debutante. Songs from Dorne correlate her arrival at Sunspear however, and Line 27 suggests her arrival at Seaguard coincided with the massacre of Westerland forces that occurred when the siege of Riverrun was lifted.
As mentioned in Tan, Arya Stark married Domeric Bolton, heir of the Dreadfort – though most scholarship believe they were betrothed, not wed for another three years, and her participation in her betrothed's particular skillset is some combination of kindred spirit, fury at the calamities having fallen onto her family by that time, or poetic license. Likely some case of all three. Needle, a sword made in the Bravosi style, is known to exist and has been credited by several sources as belonging to Arya Stark. That she might have made a name for herself using it off the battlefield rather than on it is in line with customs of the time (few exceptions nonwithstanding).
Sansa Stark fades in and out of history; more often than not a tragic figure as witness to events but in this case it is well documented that she was in attendance at her father's beheading.
No record adequately gives name to 'the snake tongued mockingbird', but if assumed to be simply someone at court who betrayed Lord Stark while singing sweetly, the most likely candidate would be the Queen Cersei Baratheon, of House Lannister. The epithet does not appear in any other surviving leoÞ.
Domeric Bolton is an interesting character throughout the leoÞ, exhibiting almost two separate personalities. Some have even speculated that "Domeric Bolton" was not one man but two; both the trueborn son of Lord Roose Bolton and also his bastard halfbrother. There is significant argument that Domeric Bolton did in fact die during the seven days of sickness and rather than recover, Ramsay Snow was made his father's heir. That all references to 'The Dreadfort Heir' from thereafter are in fact explicitly in reference to Ramsay, even in cases where Domeric is mentioned by name. Three major elements rebut this. Domeric is shown in several leoÞ to maintain characteristics, relationships, and expertise gained prior to his sickness. Second, Domeric and Ramsay explicitly clash in at least one leoÞ, incomplete though it is. Third, and most compelling, it is unlikely that Lord and Lady Stark would accept a legitimized bastard courting his eldest daughter, however briefly.
Flaying was a touchy subject during the War of the Five Kings, and its use among the northern forces was both a fearsome weapon and a rallying call among the southern kingdoms to repel the northern forces as savages. Even among the northern Moot, it was rapidly agreed that it would remain forbidden in the North proper, and the practice was banned in the south even among northern forces following the Bitterbridge Accords. Shortly thereafter Domeric, now Lord Bolton, was sent back north to deal with Ironborn reavers, against whom no such ban existed and no southern qualms were raised.
That said, how much of the alleged flaying actually took place, both north and south certainly believed it did, and it is as likely as any explanation for how Robb Stark's host was able to fall upon an unprepared western host in training, well behind its own defensive lines. Certainly those singing the leoÞ had every reason to believe the words. When the Boltons went back north, they took with them a significant baggage claim of plunder, and Robb's willingness to marry his sister to Domeric also suggests a high rank of prestige and gratitude between two houses that were historically at one another's throats.
Finally, the mutual mutilations between then Lord Bolton and the wildling clan leader Tormund Giantsbane are likely poetic license to fill gaps of known events. Certainly, the Flight of the Wildlings was a volatile period with build up anger and bad blood on both sides. Lord Bolton for at least a period oversaw the disarmament of the Wildlings before their permission to travel beneath the wall was granted, and likely more than a few wildling chieftains reacted to this violently. At some point Lord Bolton lost his hand, and at some point the treatment of wildlings south of the wall deteriorated into horrific conditions; how much one side instigated the other is lost, but what is known is blood was shed in vast quantities on both sides before most of the Wildlings reached what was then still the Westerlands, events so tramautic that they compose a dozen surviving leoÞ alone, as well as countless songs and stories among both the wildlings and the Reachmarch.