It was the horse who chose Narnia, that much is clear.
His name was Strawberry, and he had been in the middle of a long and troubling day. First he had been out doing his daily work with his cabby on the streets of London when an otherworldly half-giantess had taken control of him and made him her “royal charger” and then it was all galloping and crowds and shouting.
Then a moment of rushing speed, and Strawberry and a number of human companions (and the otherworlder) found themselves in the wood between worlds. And it was there that Strawberry “shook his head, gave a cheerful whinny, and seemed to feel better.”
It was then that “Strawberry did the most natural thing in the world.” He stepped into one of the pools. Not because he knew each pool was a world, or had any idea about worlds, or woods between worlds, or anything else, but only because he was thirsty. He stepped in to have a drink (though he never got one) and found himself in the proto-darkness of the nothingness before a world begins.
Then there was The Voice. Singing a song that some of the humans seemed to like and, well, Strawberry seemed to like it too: “[H]e gave the sort of whinny a horse would give if, after years of being a cab-horse, it found itself back in the old field where it had played as a foal, and saw someone whom it remembered and loved coming across the field to bring it a lump of sugar.” Something about that music brought the horse strength. Vitality.
And then, as the World came into being and plants began to fill what had been nothing, and as the Great Lion walked to and fro and sang his creation song, Strawberry happily returned to doing what a happy horse does: he began to eat “delicious mouthfuls of new grass.”
Strawberry the horse is no major character in the story of The Magician’s Nephew, but we see some fascinating bits of the story’s theme—the creation—playing out in his story. It’s all the more interesting because Strawberry—unlike the other animals of Narnia—is not created in this story. He’s from our world. And while Aslan doesn’t choose every animal in Narnia to be a talking animal (he chooses two at a time), he does choose Strawberry. As a matter of fact, he’s the first animal to speak outside of their initial chorus (“Hail, Aslan. We hear and obey. We are awake. We love. We think. We speak. We know.”). Strawberry follows up immediately with, “But, please, we don’t know very much yet.”
What’s fascinating to me about good old Strawberry is that he seems to go through the entire process of evolutionary spiritual growth that Lewis lays out in various places. He starts as a beast, a sort of pre-conscious animal that isn’t completely aware of either himself or the world in the same way he soon will be. Aslan refers to the previous state of the animals as “dumb and witless” (dumb in this context meaning without speech). Strawberry himself says that he scarcely remembers these days once he’s awake: “But I’ve a sort of idea I’ve seen a thing like this before. I’ve a feeling I lived somewhere else—or was something else—before Aslan woke us all up a few minutes ago. It’s all very muddled. Like a dream.” He has vague memories of humans, of the sting of the whip, of the glories of sugar, and when they talk about it, it comes back to him in bits and pieces. But he has become something—or rather someone—else.
Aslan makes it quite clear that in this time, Strawberry wasn’t some free animal. He was a slave. In fact, Lewis as narrator says the exact same thing. As the clean air of creation begins to work on Strawberry—before he’s even given the gift of speech—Lewis says, “He no longer looked like the poor, old slave he had been in London; he was picking up his feet and holding his head erect.”
So Strawberry, in this first stage, goes from beast to person. From a dream to wakefulness. From slavery to freedom. From silence to speech, from witless to intelligent. All of this because one, he was thirsty. And two, because Aslan chose him. No doubt Lewis chose all these things with clear intent. Even the thirst of the horse is likely another reference to the “living water” that Jesus talks about in scripture (Lewis loves this metaphor and you may recall it from The Silver Chair, when Jill is thirsty and discovers the only way to access the water is by going quite close to Aslan.). In fact, it’s not an uncommon metaphor in scripture, see Isaiah 55:1-5, or the words of Jesus in John 7:37-39 (note that here Jesus equates the water of life with the Spirit—in Greek the same word means breath, wind, or spirit—and the first thing that happens in the darkness of the pre-creation after the Voice begins its song is, “A light wind, very fresh, began to stir.”), or, again in the very last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22… note especially verse 17.
But there is still another transformation in store for Strawberry. Aslan turns to Digory and tells him that it’s time to “undo the wrong that you have done to my sweet country of Narnia on the very day of its birth.” There is a quest that must be undertaken, a journey to retrieve a magical apple. When Digory says that he might need help for such a task, Aslan turns to Strawberry and asks, “My dear, would you like to be a winged horse?”
Which Strawberry desperately wants, but he only humbly says, “If you wish, Aslan—if you really mean—I don’t know why it should be me—I’m not a very clever horse.” Aslan does wish, and he roars, “Be winged. Be the father of all flying horses,” and Strawberry rears up like he would have done “in the bad old day” and wings burst from his shoulders just like the animals of Narnia burst from the ground. And Aslan asks him if it is good and Strawberry—or the creature who used to be strawberry—replies, “It is very good, Aslan.”
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Note that these words— “very good” in reference to the creation—are used in scripture, as well. Each day, as God creates the world, there is a moment of reflection on all that has been made and then God says, “It is good.” This goes on until the final day of creation, when God looks at creation in general—and humanity specifically, the culmination of God’s creative power—and says it is “very good.” Surely, Lewis is echoing that here.
But this winged horse is not Strawberry any longer, because Aslan gives him a new name: Fledge. Fledge, of course, being a word that means “to acquire feathers.” Getting a new name when following God or accepting a new mission in God’s service is common in scripture: Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel, Simon becomes Peter, Saul becomes Paul, and Strawberry becomes Fledge. He’s given a new name, a new quest, and becomes a new person. In Christian scripture we’re told that every follower of Jesus will one day get a new name, a sort of pet name between God and his beloved, that is known only to God and the one who receives it. And naming is part of the creation. Frank is told that part of his job as king will be to name the animals. Adam named the animals in Eden. There is power in names, and part of that power is recognizing what a thing is, who a person is at their heart.
So Strawberry goes from beast to person to something more. Someone indelibly touched by the magic of Aslan, so that it’s clear to all who see him that he is not just a horse, not even just a talking horse, but a person who has been in the presence of Aslan, who has received a name from him, who has been bestowed with the transformative power of certain gifts so he can perform the tasks and quests set out for him.
Interesting side note: Aslan says that Fledge will be the “father of all flying horses” and yet we don’t see another one in the Chronicles of Narnia. There isn’t a “mother” of all flying horses, and while we do see Fledge again in the final book of the series, there’s not even a moment in the rest of the Chronicles where we see a flock of winged horses soaring overhead. The only other moment that a winged horse is mentioned is in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when it’s mentioned that there is a winged horse turned to stone in the white witch’s castle. But even there, it’s only one winged horse and we’re told nothing about it: gender, color, name. It could well be Fledge himself…
This is the sort of question when studying Lewis that’s worth pushing into. Sometimes it might just be a moment of sloppiness (like the varying height of Reepicheep), and sometimes it’s something done with quiet purpose (see the book Planet Narnia!). I have no idea why this is…the only thing I can think of today is that Pegasus is also a sort of singular flying horse, and I do note with some interest that Hesiod says that the name Pegasus comes from the word πηγή, meaning “spring” or well, and in some myths where Pegasus stepped, springs of water came up, and it was while drinking from a spring that Pegasus is caught by the hero Bellerophon. In any case, I’m not sure what’s going on here, but if someone would like to use the question to write their doctoral thesis, I bet there are clues out there for those who take the time.
After this transformation for Fledge, there are those who struggle to call him by his new name. Even the narrator calls him Strawberry and then says “or Fledge as we must now call him.” Frank calls him Strawberry and immediately corrects himself to Fledge, and that’s the end of that. Strawberry never appears again in the book; it’s only Fledge now.
Fledge goes on his adventure with the children, and he serves as transportation, shelter (the children sleep nestled beneath his wings), and encouragement. When they return home, Fledge is astonished to see that his “old master” Frank has been transformed as well. He was never a beast, but he has gone from person to King (or, as Fledge says, a “real Master”…Aslan makes it clear that a Master or King in this sense is not one who owns others or treats them as slaves, but one who provides for and protects those in his care). Here we get another clue of the transformation from person to something more, for as Fledge looks at Frank he sees that “[a]ll the sharpness and cunning and quarrelsomeness which he had picked up as a London cabby seemed to have been washed away, and the courage and kindness which he had always had were easier to see. Perhaps it was the air of the young world that had done it, or talking with Aslan, or both.”
So Frank, who had been at least kind-hearted already, has his kindness brought into more obvious action in his life. His courage is increased. And what has gone away? Sharpness, cunning, quarrelsomeness. All the sorts of things that we see in Uncle Andrew, that we notice in Jadis.
I’ve been working hard not to jump ahead into other books, but there is one more Fledge moment in the Chronicles, and it’s so sweet and lovely I don’t want to miss it when we talk about The Last Battle. For in The Magician’s Nephew we learn about what Narnia was, how it came to be. The creation, the coming of evil, the first king and queen, the talking beasts and the wakened trees, and, yes, the horse Strawberry who was once a lowly slave, and then a True Horse and then Someone Better: Fledge, father of all winged horses.
In The Last Battle there is a moment…just a sentence, really…where the children Digory and Polly have grown (Digory Kirke became Professor Kirke in time, and then Lord Digory; Polly Plummer became Aunt Polly and then Lady Polly) and in that world to come we see—not just a simple winged horse. Why, that was just the beginning of Fledge’s life. For “out of the gateway there came a horse so mighty and noble that even a Unicorn might feel shy in its presence: a great winged horse. It looked a moment at the Lord Digory and the Lady Polly and neighed out ‘What, cousins!’ and they both shouted ‘Fledge! Good old Fledge!’ and rushed to kiss it.”
It may be our thirst that brings us to Narnia, but it’s Aslan who chooses us. Lewis believed strongly that the moment of creation is a blessing that provides us with choices. That when we are given the gift of consciousness, of speech, of life, of freedom, that we have then the ability to let ourselves become something less than we were created to be: to allow ourselves to “pick up” the qualities of quarrelsomeness or sharpness or cunningness. Or else to continue to grow, to change, to cultivate kindness and courage. The moment of creation is not the peak of what we could be…we are invited to become something—someone—much more than what we are, much more than who we were to begin.
In this book, Lewis assures us that there is a moment—we can expect it, we can rely on it—when the Creator will turn to us and say, “Beloved…would you like wings?”
Matt Mikalatos is the author of the YA fantasy The Crescent Stone. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on Facebook.
Beautiful, beautiful article, Matt. Not much more than that to say at the moment. But thank you for writing this.
@1/Sonofthunder. Thank you! It was my absolute pleasure.
Regarding the question on the “father of all flying horses,” it’s possible that Lewis is engaging in a pun.
The word “Pegasus” derives from the Greek word for “spring,” as was mentioned, but I’ve uncovered a bit of nuances that accompany that term. According to Klein’s Etymological Dictionary (allegedly… I’m only quoting a secondary source), a cognate of that same Greek word is the term for “sperm,” which has clear links to fatherhood. Additionally, Klein also claims that yet another cognate of the same word is “spirit,” which ties into this article quite nicely.
It’s possible that Lewis knew about the etymological linkage between all of these terms and was having a bit of fun.
(But please do fact-check these claims–I don’t have a copy of Klein to verify this assertion for myself).
Another wonderful essay, Matt. Even as a kid I always wondered if Aslan gave the gift of speech to another male horse so that there would be a male and female horse to populate Narnia after he transforms Fledge. And I also wondered how Fledge would be the father of all winged horses unless he had a winged horse wife to be their mother. And yes, it bugged me then too, that we only ever see one winged horse in the rest of the books.
Lewis doesn’t seem overly interested in world building is my takeaway. Details that weren’t central to the story being told, just didn’t matter that much to him it seems. It must have driven Tolkien crazy.
@@.-@ templar, I believe Narnia was implied to have many centuries of history not directly involved with the extra dimensional adventures of British schoolchildren. The fact that we don’t happen to ever see another winged horse doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Perhaps they even went extinct between Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I wouldn’t call their subsequent absence an error of world building.
That said, Lewis obviously wasn’t as methodical a world builder as Tolkien. No one was, until at least Frank Herbert. What Tolkien disliked about Narnia, I believe, was its eclectic mixing of mythologies, which he found distasteful. Although he was guilty of that too, in a someqhat subtler way, with his own blend of Christian and Norse Pagan influences.
About names: you have a good point with the renaming, but I’d like to add that in the bible, there are at least 3 more name-change examples I can give: Pharaoh with Joseph, Pharaoh Necho and Jehoiakim, and Nebuchadnezzar and Zedekiah. From those it can be understood that name changing is an expression of ownership of sorts.
Hope that was helpful.
@6/trutharchivist. There’s a BUNCH of other examples, and many of them are — like most of the ones you mentioned — when one culture takes over another and either forces or “gifts” someone with a name in their language or culture. So Moses, for instance, had more than one name (Moses was his Egyptian name, given to him by his foster mother). Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were originally Hannaniah, Mishael, and Azariah. And Daniel, of course, had the Babylonian/Chaldean name Beltashazzar. There were a lot of reasons names got changed in scripture (just as there are a lot of reasons names get changed today!).
Your final sentence made me tear up a little! What a beautiful promise and hope.
As soon as you mentioned that they all ended up in Narnia because Strawberry was thirsty, I thought of Jill in The Silver Chair, and Aslan’s grave invitation: “If you are thirsty, come and drink.” I was delighted to see you make the same connection later in the essay, as well.
Regarding the name Fledge, I also think of how we speak of someone or something as being “full-fledged” when they have come into their own, grown into the person they are meant to be, so to speak. So the name itself, not just the act of being renamed, stands as a reminder of him becoming more than what he was, becoming the horse (or Horse) he was always meant to be.
Another beautiful essay; I really don’t have much to add.
But, a happy (as happy as it can be) Ash Wednesday/first day of Lent, if that is part of your tradition. :)
IIRC, Pegasus came out of Medusa’s head when it got cut off, and he had a brother who’s a winged boar, Chrysaor, who was born the same way. That’s the origin story I remember, I don’t know if there are any other versions. Pegasus (and Chrysaor as well) seem to be pretty unique as far as magical creatures go, we seem to refer to Pegasus as an individual’s name rather than a species name. Attempts to use Pegasus as a species name have always sounded awkward to me, and winged-horse is fine as a description but it’s not a name in the same way that chimera or sphinx is. The seeming lack of other flying horses in Narnia is just Fledge following in that uniqueness.
I also wonder as there’s no qualifier that he’s the father of all flying horses in Narnia, whether Lewis is suggesting Fledge is the father of all flying horses in all worlds, it’s pretty unlikely and a little timey-wimey given Pegasus, but it’s fun to think about.
Another terrific essay. They’ve all been excellent and the last two or three have really moved me. Thank you.
Maybe it turns out wings are a dominant trait and Fledge can mate with “regular” talking Horses who will then have some winged offspring. It is interesting that there aren’t more talking Horses mentioned in the other Chronicles, though — so maybe it’s a recessive trait and doesn’t happen often? I don’t know… probably not worth it to try and apply genetics to Narnia, LOL.
A beautiful article! The concept of a new name to go with the new identity also appears in The Horse and His Boy, where Shasta gets his new (true?) name, Cor. There’s another example in TMN, where plain old “Nellie” becomes “Queen Helen” (a name heavy with Classical Greek associations).
While we’re on the topic of Nellie/Helen, and in anticipation of a discussion of the Susan Problem, can we note that Nellie is a married woman with enough of an interest in fashion to spend some of her pin money (presumably meagre – Frank can barely afford oats for the horse he needs for his livelihood, even if we allow for her to earn a bit extra by taking in washing) on a fancy hat with imitation cherries? She is called into Narnia to become its first queen – a nice counterexample to the proposal that there’s no room in Narnia for a real-world adult woman of childbearing years who isn’t a virgin. It’s a pity we don’t get more of her backstory.
Re Fletch. Lewis already knew Narnia wasn’t going to be populated by flying horses, so I’m guessing he only meant father in the sense of ‘first’ – much as we’d say somebody was the father of democracy (as in founding father). A quick google suggests the same ambivalent meaning isn’t just confined to English, but to Hebrew as well – e.g. in the bible; ‘His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe.’
So while Lewis was allowing for the possibility of other flying horses in Narnia, he doesn’t mean they’d necessarily be descended from Fletch. Or so I suspect.
@10- Narnia is quite time-wimey, and a wardrobe would make a great chameleon circuit disguise for a TARDIS, just as an errant Time-Lord might well go simply by “The Professor…”
But while time in Narnia and the Pevensies England might run at variable relative paces, my recollection is that as far we see they always seem to run in the same direction.
Thank you Matt for this beautiful text, it came really timely. Our beloved rabbit Eppu died yesterday morning, he had a beautiful character. He was our beloved rabbit but I know that he has got his wings now and one day we will meet again.
@15, Lol, I know, the direction of the flow of time is why I said it’s unlikely. I also recently had a thought about Time-Lords, a fun head-canon for myself, tangentially related to this article because of the name thing, but what if all Time-Lords have two names, one they’re given at birth and one they choose when they graduate from the academy or something, it would go with the new name new identity idea as well as the “name you choose is a promise” idea.
@13: yes, Helen is an adult woman with an interest in fashion. however, may I point out that it is specifically remarked that, if she’d actually been wearing the hat with the imitation cherries, “she would have looked dreadful.” Her interest in fashion did her no favors in the narrator’s eyes.
Moreover, not only do we not get anything of her backstory, we never hear her speak a word for herself. In Frank’s conversation with Aslan on the duties of kingship in Narnia, her husband makes agreements on her behalf, but she herself just stands there looking shy and covered in soapsuds.
So no, she’s not much help.
Beautiful article, Matt! You made me cry. Marko, I am sorry for your loss, and I believe heaven wouldn’t be heaven if our beloved animals weren’t there, too.Amaryllis, you’re right about the hat! But there’s this, too.
Helen (and that’s just the formal form of Nellie) does, in fact, speak up. She asks Aslan if Polly can’t go on the adventure, too–and if Polly hadn’t gone, the witch’s temptation would have been that much worse. It was her careless cruelty, specifically directed toward Polly, that woke Digory up.
So Helen’s kindness and empathy end up mattering just as much as Frank’s, if not more. Just my two cents!
I love your commentary regarding THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW, it gives wider perspective and is quite insightful.
I’m not sure Nellie’s hat qualifies as fashion in the sense that Susan, say, may be into. A fancy hat was an essential part of best clothes for a respectable woman. Frank and Nellie are “respectable working class” when they’re in our world (the English class system was very strong then), and have a code of proper behaviour. Good clothes showed respect for other people. If anything the “dreadful” hat suggests that her taste isn’t very sophisticated.
A London cabby is one of Black Beauty’s best masters : it would be pleasant to think of them both in Narnia.