The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe

C.S. Lewis was an Irish writer. Born in Belfast in 1898, and living in County Down until the age of nine, as a young child, Lewis probably heard many of the old Irish Legends and mythological stories that most Irish children would learn, even to this day. This essay seeks to find evidence of the influence these stories had on Lewis’s work in later life, especially in ‘The Chronicles of ‘Narnia’. It focuses mainly on ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ and ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. It examines the similarities between Queen Jadis in ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ and the legendary Queen Medbh of Connacht, compares Tír na nÓg with the land of Narnia in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, analyses the influences of other Irish mythology on these …show more content…
In ‘The Magician’s Nephew’*Lewis, pg. no., Polly and Digory find themselves in a strange land. In the ruins of a castle, Digory rings a bell which awakens Jadis, the once-queen of that land. Upon first meeting her, Digory thinks of Jadis as being “wonderfully brave. And strong”. These traits could easily be associated with Medbh, the legendary queen of Connacht. As Jadis tells the children the story of her land, and of the destruction of Charn, we can see how it resembles the beginning of ‘Táin Bó Cúailnge’, the story of the Cattle Raid of Cooley. The story beings with a power struggle between family members; in Jadis’s case, between herself and her sister, and in the case of the Táin, between Medbh and her husband Ailill. In each story, there is one thing which sets the two family members apart; Jadis’s knowledge of the ‘Deplorable Word, and Ailill’s prized bull. Jadis claims to have “paid a terrible price” to learn this “secret of secrets”. Likewise, Medbh goes to great lengths to rid her husband of his bull, staging a cattle raid to gain a bull of equal measure, which costs her the lives of all of her soldiers. Then, having gained an equally prized bull, she forces it to fight her husband’s bull. Medbh’s bull wins in battle, but ultimately pays a terrible …show more content…
the land of Narnia is comparable to that of Tír na nÓg, or ‘The Land of the Young’ in Irish mythology. Tír na nÓg is a land of youth and fertility, where there is always plenty to eat and everyone is in good health. Although the Narnia we see at the start of ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ isn’t exactly like this, we know from the story of the creation of Narnia, at the end of ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ that this country is also a land of fertility and bounty. After the battle against the White Witch’s army is won, Aslan supplies food, seemingly out of nowhere for all who fought and tended to the wounded. We know that the lamppost where the children enter Narnia from the wardrobe grew up from an iron bar which was thrown to the ground by Jadis, and there is such fertility in the soil of the land that the trees are alive enough to function as spies for the White Witch. Not only are the trees able to communicate with other beings, but the land of Narnia is filled with magical beings. There are some creatures, such as fauns and unicorn, which only appear in mythology, as well as some creatures, common to our world, which have magical abilities, such as the ability to speak to the children. This bears a resemblance to Niamh’s horse from Tír na nÓg, which can run across the water, and in some versions of the story, even talk with Oisín. The castle of Cair Paravel is set at the seaside. This could reflect back to the