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Two more practical people arrived in the little wood. One was a Red Dwarf whose name appeared to be Duffle. The other was a stag, a beautiful lordly creature with wide liquid eyes, dappled flanks and legs so thin and graceful that they looked as if you could break them with two fingers.
“Lion alive!” roared the Dwarf as soon as he had heard the news. “And if that’s so, why are we all standing still, chattering? Enemies at Anvard! News must be sent to Cair Paravel at once. The army must be called out. Narnia must go to the aid of King Lune. [ …] Anyone here got more speed than me?” “I’ve got speed,” said the Stag. “What’s my message? How many Calormenes?” “Two hundred: under Prince Rabadash. And—” But the Stag was already away—all four legs off the ground at once, and in a moment its white stern had disappeared among the remoter trees. |
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This is one of the more vivid pieces of description in The Horse and His Boy, occurring after Shasta (Prince Cor) runs over the mountain pass and tells the Narnians of the Calormene invasion. I can see it in my mind’s eye just so: This graceful stag, hearing the gist of the message, rearing and pivoting as he turns to leap and turning to bound off into the woods. It’s so apt, too, the bit about the powerful body and long delicate-looking legs (though they surely aren’t) which is exactly what a child would notice about such a creature. Perhaps it’s watching the Walt Disney version of Bambi, or scenes from Bambi, so many times that I fused the two in my mind.
And there’s that name that is revealed later… Chervy.
When you compare this name to the other animals; names in the Chronicles, it stands out because of that -y ending. To English speaking ears, it sounds like a nickname, but for what?
It might be a nickname for the herb Chervil. I can see that. A deer would find it quite tasty to eat. But no other Talking Animal was named after their favorite food.
There’s also the comparison to what seems obvious in America: Chevy. Take out the r and there you have it. But as Lewis wrote this in 1948 and wasn’t into American car culture (did he ever learn to drive?) I doubt that as well. England had its own car manufacturers and cars weren’t being imported because of WWII anyway.
But look deeper, to the actual meaning of the French surname Chevrolet, and it combines the words cheval (horse) and vot (to go) thus symbolizing speed, movement, freedom.
Perhaps Lewis transposed the -v and the -r of Chevrolet, and added the y, for the name?
There’s also the possibility that he took the French word for deer, cerf — the f of which can sound, phonetically, close to a v — and added the y. Cervus is in fact the Latin word for deer, reflected in the word cervine, an adjective describing deer-like qualities. For years I felt sure this was case.
But let’s go back to Chevy. Americans of a certain age would be reminded of comedian Chevy Chase. That wasn’t his real name of course, his real name being the rather unfunny Cornelius Crane Chase which means his audience would laugh at him, not with him. Where did he get his nickname? His grandmother, who was of Scottish descent, granted him that.
Let’s look further. Chevy Chase is also the name of an old English ballad, the sort that were popular in the 14th and 15th centuries and served as a form of singable oral history. It refers to a spat between two nobles. Percy, the English Earl of Northumberland, goes hunting in the Cheviot Hills straddling the Anglo-Scottish border and Scottish Earl Douglas interprets it as an attack on his border. Battle ensues. Thus we get the name Chevy — referring to the Cheviot Hills — and Chase, an archaic English word that refers to a hunting ground, or often the hunt itself.
The ballad was very popular, though, as ballads are prone to doing, spawned many different versions over the years. References to it were rife in literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. From the ballad came the English word chivvy or chevy (now itself somewhat archaic) one meaning of which is to hassle or pester a person, in a playful way, to perform a needed task, which is exactly what Duffle is doing to Chervy in the text.
In America’s colonial period a tract of land outside the Washington D. C. was named Chevy Chase by the British, which eventually — you guessed — would became the town of Chevy Chase in Maryland, as well as its whole surrounding area, hoity-toity upscale places today, home to movers and shakers in the U.S. government. The historical website for the area posits also that the name Chevy Chase might also have come from the French word chevauchee, which means (horse) ride, which was the French way to refer to these Anglo-Scottish border clashes.
Though we cannot know what was in Lewis’ mind as he named this character, I am sure that any or all of this etymology was an influence… a fleet creature who raced against time to inform allies of an upcoming battle.
