Gentle Mother
A meta piece about Sansa Stark's role as "gentle mother" with regard to religious faith and inspired by the parallels between her hymn and a Catholic hymn about Mary, Mother of God. Read it on AO3 here. My love and gratitude to @rapturousaurora and @blacksable6364 for their feedback. <3
Sansa’s Hymn Hail Mary, Gentle Woman (starting at 1:08)
“Gentle Mother, font of mercy, Gentle woman, Quiet light
save our sons from war, we pray, Morning star, So strong and bright
stay the swords and stay the arrows, Gentle Mother, Peaceful dove
let them know a better day, Teach us wisdom, Teach us love.
Gentle Mother, strength of women, Blessed are you Among women
help our daughters through this fray, Blest in turn All women too
soothe the wrath and tame the fury, Blessed they With peaceful spirits
teach us all a kinder way.” Blessed they With gentle hearts.
“Hail Mary, Gentle Mother” is a Catholic hymn typically used during the month of May, which is dedicated to Mary, Mother of God, especially during May crowning ceremonies (in which a statue of Mary is crowned with a flower crown, usually by girls who have just received the sacrament of Holy Communion for the first time. They re-wear their first Communion dresses at this ceremony, and it is a profound honor to be chosen to crown Mary.) While I cannot say for certain of course that GRRM based Sansa’s hymn on this particular hymn, as he has stated the Faith of the Seven is based on medieval Catholicism, the lyric parallels seem particularly obvious.
While baptism is not particularly associated with Mary, Mother of God in the Christian tradition (“I baptize you in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” and Mary was not present that the reader knows of at Jesus Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan), the language “font of mercy” as religious imagery calls the tradition to mind. In Catholicism, the holy water of baptism washes away the stain of original sin. There are no references to baptism (yet) in ASOIAF, but the tradition of kings being anointed with holy oil does also parallel medieval Catholicism. “To Jesus, through Mary” is a traditional quotation emphasizing the Catholic devotion to Mary as effective devotion to her son, Jesus Christ. The medieval theologian Odo of Canterbury is quoted as stating "In fact, one goes to Christ through Mary, one goes to the Son through the Mother. By means of the Mother of Mercy one reaches mercy itself."
In the Faith of the Seven, the Mother is often asked for mercy (“The Mother was merciful, all the septons agreed,” and is described as giving the gift of life in “The Song of the Seven.”
Sansa is learning, to her sorrow, that life is not a song or a story, whether from the Faith of the Seven or the Westerosi equivalent of fairytales. In the scene in which she sings this hymn, she in fact performs the role of the gentle mother comforting the women around her, in sharp contrast to Queen Cersei, who abandons that duty (and would not be deemed a gentle mother either within the narrative or by the reader). It is profound and poignant that Sansa retreats to the weirwood in King’s Landing to be alone with her thoughts, as it is the one and only place in that city most like Winterfell. It is a physical and emotional reminder of her home, of her true self.
