Hmmm, that's a good point — I'd never thought of that issue. I suspect it's another of the little inconsistencies Lewis himself never picked up on as he was writing — just like Reepicheep having a Dryad singing that song over his cradle when, at the time he was born (obviously before the action of Prince Caspian starts), all the tree-people were asleep and no-one was ever able to wake them before Aslan returned...  

Good point! I wonder if maybe the dryads were just slowly falling asleep and Reep's nurse was the only one of the only ones left... still, it's more likely an accidental inconsistency! 

Posted by: @cleander

Hello Narnian friends, 

My Narnia-crazed  brain randomly thought of something the other day:

Why is it that when the Pevensies and Caspian find Lord Restimar on Deathwater Island, he is found to have been carrying coins that are recognizable as "Narnian lions and trees?" 

Is that basically the Narnian equivalent of 'heads' and 'tails'??  I keep coming back to this, but I have a feeling that the 're-working' of the Chronicles that Lewis wanted to do but never could before his death would have probably addressed some of these continuity hiccups. 

Posted by: @cleander

My only guess is maybe Lord Restimar held to the old ways (perhaps a contributing factor to his banishment) and secretly held on to some ancient Narnian coins he'd got hold of.

Not exactly where you were going with that, but I kind of love the idea of him being a coin collector. I imagine one could find some very interesting stuff in Narnia if you had a metal detector with you instead of a torch.

In seriousness... it's not inconceivable to me that they might have some old Narnian coins somewhere in the treasury at Miraz's castle, given that Telmarines surely plundered the Narnians during the takeover. The Telmarines are practical and it wouldn't be very practical to destroy currency that might be the only legal tender in certain lands. Maybe the Seven Lords were given a portion of them for their voyage in case they encountered islands where Trees and Lions were the dominant currency?

Posted by: @cleander

Good point! I wonder if maybe the dryads were just slowly falling asleep and Reep's nurse was the only one of the only ones left... still, it's more likely an accidental inconsistency! 

Out of all the dryads in Narnia, surely one of them suffers from insomnia.

Perhaps it was more of a dream than something that occurred in waking hours... I can imagine him cradled in the boughs of a tree, and hearing snatches of a lullaby as he falls asleep and having the sense that it is a dryad singing to him, but he never hears it when he is fully awake.

(For the record, I do agree that these are probably inconsistencies that slipped past Lewis's notice when he was writing the books, but that doesn't mean we can't come up with clever ways to make sense of them. )

I've heard that Lewis had some intentions of making The Voyage of the Dawn Treader the last Narnia book. If so, it's possible that he really wanted to establish what images Narnians use on their coins and believed this was his last chance to do so, even if it didn't make much sense on reflection.