"Narnia" doesn't rhyme with "balmier"… or does it?
Moments before he tumbles into the painting, Eustace mocks his cousins in verse, and the budding poet isn't entirely wrong.
In the first chapter of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Edmund and Lucy are gazing at a painting of a ship in Lucy's bedroom. Eustace, who has been listening at the door, strolls in grinning: he loves teasing them about their Narnia "game". He announces he's working on a limerick about some kids who played at Narnia and grew "balmier and balmier".
Lucy points out that Narnia and balmier don't rhyme. Eustace, unruffled, replies that it's an assonance. Edmund immediately begs his sister not to ask what that means, because Eustace is only longing to be asked.
The joke is that, in a British accent, the two words really do share the same long "ah" and the same ending, so Eustace is right about the word and wrong about Narnia. Minutes later the waves in the painting start to move, and the scoffer ends up in Narnian seawater along with his cousins.
See also
- Eustace Clarence Scrubb
- Lucy Pevensie
- Edmund Pevensie
- The picture of the Dawn Treader
- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Sources
- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), ch. 1 “The Picture in the Bedroom”.
- Faded Page — The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
- Further In — Chapter 1.