Excellent points all. I agree now that Nikabrik's statements can be taken a different way. He just always seemed like a such a creature of animus that I made an assumption.

But it's true that the only thing that one can assert factually is that Jadis certainly hated beavers. And a blatant outspoken prejudice against an entire species wouldn't likely be tolerated by someone like Trufflehunter, so yeah, maybe he was just stating a fact.

Posted by: @col-klink

Since I always interpreted the line along the same lines as Courtenay, I think the question is more of what did the White Witch have against beavers? It's true that the only beavers we meet in the books were actively opposed to her but that could be more as a response to her persecution of them rather than vice versa.

There's another thing we're just never told. I remember one writer of a Narnia commentary suggesting that the real reason Lewis decided to have no more beavers living in Narnia may simply have been that he made the mistake of calling his first two beavers "Mr and Mrs Beaver", and after that, what was he to call any future beavers?? But that doesn't seem to be a very strong argument. Certainly after LWW he gives his Talking Beasts actual names and never refers to any of them as "Mr / Mrs [species of animal]" again. But none of that means that the original Mr and Mrs Beaver couldn't have had personal names; they may simply have chosen not to give those to the four young strangers they met in the woods! Or from a writer's point of view, maybe Lewis at the time just thought it was more suitable and polite for the Pevensies to address them as "Mr and Mrs Beaver" rather than being on a first-name basis. Or were the two beavers in LWW actually the last two of their kind in the whole of Narnia, and had been living alone for so long that they no longer saw the need to use personal names?? 

There's also the point where the children and the Beavers, during their journey to the Stone Table, spend the night in a hidden cave that Mr Beaver calls "an old hiding-place for beavers in bad times". Could they have been persecuted throughout the Witch's 100-year reign and perhaps even before? Were they all somehow such a threat to the Witch that she felt they needed to be eliminated entirely? Did she do that to any other species of Talking Beasts? The Walden film and one stage production I've seen made a big feature of other creatures resisting the Witch's regime and the tension between those who were on her side and those who weren't, but the book itself says almost nothing about that, so we're left to guess and speculate for ourselves.

One thing that does occur to me is that at the time Lewis was writing the Narnia books, beavers were no longer found in Britain — they are native to the UK but were hunted to extinction in the 16th century. (They have been successfully reintroduced in a few places in England and Scotland in the last 15 years or so and their numbers are expanding.) Maybe, after including beavers in Narnia in his first book, Lewis decided to have them suffer the same fate as beavers in the country where he lived? On the other hand though, there are Talking Bears in Narnia (as we see in Prince Caspian), and that's another type of animal that was originally found in Britain but is now extinct here, so that doesn't really tell us anything...

In short, it's all a mystery!!  

It does kind of leave to your imagination. We can't know for sure what have become of the beavers after LWW.

We don’t know of any bad beavers in Narnia, but there were some bad dwarfs in The Last Battle who didn’t want to be helped by Aslan.  I wonder if Lewis liked dwarfs when he wrote the Narnia books.  They often seemed like grumpy old men (especially Nikabrik when he was very angry and disagreeable).  Trumpkin wasn’t always poor mannered, but he was a bit gruff sometimes.  I actually thought Mrs. and Mrs. Beaver were more likable, but that is just my view.  Curmudgeonly characters are still likable although they may be somewhat grouchy. Puddleglum was more gloomy than grouchy.  I think they are all colorful characters and fit in well in the story even if I might like some better than others. 🙂

I am not sure if dwarfs or dwarves is the correct plural of dwarf. I looked it up and found that Tolkien used dwarves, but Lewis used dwarfs as the plural. Lewis was probably correct in his use of grammar. Also, the grammar websites say that dwarfs is correct so that’s probably right. 🙂

Posted by: @narnian78

I am not sure if dwarfs or dwarves is the correct plural of dwarf. I looked it up and found that Tolkien used dwarves, but Lewis used dwarfs as the plural. Lewis was probably correct in his use of grammar. Also, the grammar websites say that dwarfs is correct so that’s probably right. 

Tolkien himself explains this in Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings:

It may be observed that in this book as in The Hobbit the form dwarves is used. It should be dwarrows (or dwerrows), if singular and plural had each gone its own way down the years, as have man and men, or goose and geese. But we no longer speak of a dwarf as often as we do of a man, or even of a goose, and memories have not been fresh enough among Men to keep hold of a special plural for a race now abandoned to folk-tales, where at least a shadow of truth is preserved, or at last to nonsense-stories in which they have become mere figures of fun. But in the Third Age something of their old character and power is still glimpsed, if already a little dimmed...

It is to mark this that I have ventured to use the form dwarves, and remove them a little, perhaps, from the sillier tales of these latter days.

So basically, it's "dwarves" if you're talking about the sort found in Tolkien's writings, and "dwarfs" for any other kind!  

@courtenay

Interestingly enough, my old dictionary that I used in college in the 1970’s says that either dwarfs or dwarves is correct. I don’t think the English language has changed much since then. But of course my old dictionary is one of American English.  I would probably trust it more than grammar websites online. The rules might be different in other English speaking countries. It might be nit picking to say that one plural is right and the other wrong so I won’t dispute the issue. 🙂

I think dwarfs are used more often in fairy tales than beavers.  I wonder if some people think they are more appealing. If Lewis had used muskrats instead of beavers it might have affected the popularity of his stories.  I don’t remember any mention of elves in the Narnia books, whereas Tolkien used both dwarfs and elves in his stories. There were eagles in Tolkien’s books, but other birds aren’t mentioned very often except for the thrushes who had their own language. With Lewis’ books there is a brief appearance of a robin in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I guess the creatures Tolkien and Lewis used were those which were the most popular in children’s stories. They wanted to follow the example of other fairy tales in choosing their characters. I kind of wish they would have used more songbirds as talking animals since for me as a birder they would have a kind of magic. 🙂

Posted by: @narnian78

With Lewis’ books there is a brief appearance of a robin in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Well, there is the mention of the Albatross in VDT, and it was a pretty big step up from a robin. I think although Lewis may have not used as many "magical" creatures as much as other fiction did in that time, I would've preferred it that way. As a child reading the story, it's so unexpected. You expect fairies and mermaids after reading something like Peter Pan, (no hate against Peter Pan, by the way, it is a classic) but then you pick up LWW and you say, "Beavers?! Well, this is new..."

I prefer his use of creatures that exist in our world because it makes Narnia seem so real. So, when I saw a fox or squirrel, I would say, "Look, that's pattertwig!" and it would make me truly believe in Narnia after I saw the creatures in real life. 

-KingEdTheJust

@kingedthejust 

I liked the albatross in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, although I wish he would have said more than Aslan’s voice “Courage, Dear Heart.”  I wonder what kind of thrush Tolkien used in The Hobbit.  Maybe a song thrush or mistle thrush, which are found in Britain and Europe. Being a birder I can’t help but wonder. Robins are interesting and should not be looked down upon because they are common birds. And here in America we have the flutelike song of the wood thrush, which is much like something from Narnia. Beavers are here too in the county park near where I live in Michigan. The animals don’t talk like they do in Narnia, but the birds sing beautifully.  🙂

Posted by: @kingedthejust

I prefer his use of creatures that exist in our world because it makes Narnia seem so real. So, when I saw a fox or squirrel, I would say, "Look, that's pattertwig!" and it would make me truly believe in Narnia after I saw the creatures in real life. 

That's actually how I felt about lampposts when I was little. I grew up in a rural area where seeing robins, squirrels and even beavers wasn't a huge deal. Lampposts were more unusual for me.

@narnian78 The Hobbit (with Tolkien's variant plural, which he himself states in the introduction is not correct in English) came out in the 1930s. Your 1970s dictionary probably included the popularised usage of it since LOTR, published in the 1950s.

And back to the beavers...

Well, given that LWW was the first book to be published, Mr. Beaver mentions that the White Witch would like Narnians to think she's human, but she's not a daughter of Eve. Well, how could he have known about the White Witch's origin? He may have been exaggerating when he said that she's half-giant and half-jinn.

Did the White Witch hate beavers? I don't think that's it. She'd liked Narnians to think that she's human, giving her the right to rule Narnia. But we can't know for sure how Mr. Beaver knew of the White Witch's origin, if actually he ever did.

Happy International Beaver Day everybody.

"Perhaps," said Nikabrik in a cold voice. "Perhaps she was for you humans, if there were any of you in those days. Perhaps she was for some of the beasts. She stamped out the Beavers, I dare say; at least there are none of them in Narnia now. But she got on all right with us Dwarfs...."

I was mighty puzzled by Nikabrik's comment when I read PC. After all, there were beavers in Narnia at the time of the White Witch, and major characters at that. Lewis wrote that sequel only a few years after LWW so it's not likely he forgot about Mr. and Mrs. Beaver.

I think the comment was Lewis's way of showing how degraded and ignorant certain creatures of Narnia had become because what they remember is not the truth. It shows how the false history Nikabrik created for himself is "bad" as opposed to the equally distant, but more spiritually positive, memories of the Talking Beasts which are "good." In other words, the reader is supposed to know Nikabrik's words are false.