From here, the Earth beneath them seems endless.
Mat looks around the group and softly he begins to sing.
Mighty oak of Manetheren,
The sword cannot be broken.
Beauty, love and wisdom, long ago.
Long ago.
Oh sing...
Sing of Manetheren...
Rafe had a very clear brief
of how the music should be like he has with everything on this show,
music very important throughout the books, it drives the story along,
it underlines without overpowering the way we feel when we're watching something.
...the blood of Aemon -Oh cry...
Cry for Manetheren, Long ago.
Unlike a lot of other fantasy shows, we aren't in the world of kings
and queens, we are in the world of normal ordinary
farmers and peasants, and Rafe had a very strong
feeling that it should have a kind of country feel to it.
The colors of his morning...
The darkness of his night.
So we're currently in the Four Kings Inn, which is located in Breen’s Spring,
which is where we finally get to meet Thom Merrilin the traveling Gleeman.
He performs a song that is the way that we're introduced to the character.
...that tourtured soul I met...
What we've tried to do is for Alex, the actor
to actually sing live,
but we actually took the trouble to prerecord it in the studio,
so we know we've got it and then he's singing it live.
He's got a little earpiece in here so he can hear the guitar
and he can actually hear himself, so he's miming to himself.
So now we get another performance, and that means he can do variations.
It sounds real. It sounds live, it doesn’t sound perfect.
I know it's not that fast, but I'm thinking
...and from the whole world breaking...
this is where we are, yeah?
So the recording session, I was a bit nervous about it
because it was early stages.
I didn't know the song that well,
they didn't know if I could sing,
but I just went for it.
I can still hear the way that he cried for the ones he was missing...
I can still hear the way that he cried for the ones he had lost...
I did it in a kind of
Tom Waits kind of way, which I think suited the song and Thom,
speaking a bit more growly like that,
and I actually really enjoyed it.
So he saw his whole world breaking, that’s the first line of the second verse,
and then, That tortured sould I met...
and then comes the line that we want to correct?
The lyrics, it’s about a man who met the man who broke the world,
who can't forget seeing what he has done to everybody, seeing the turmoil.
And even though the world carries on and tries to find a new way of living,
he can't forget what he did and thought that was quite beautiful.
The man who can’t forget.