The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe popular English folklore. There are several parallels between the White Witch and the immortal white queen, Ayesha, of H. Rider Haggard's "She", a novel greatly admired by C. S. Lewis. "The Story of the Amulet" written by Edith Nesbit also contains scenes that can be considered precursors to sequences presenting Jadis, particularly in "The Magician's Nephew". Nesbit's short story "The Aunt and Amabel" includes the motif of a girl entering a wardrobe to gain access to a magical place. The freeing of Aslan's body from the stone table by field mice is reminiscent of Aesop's fable of "The Lion and
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe beginning of the next year. Then everything changed. In his essay "It All Began With a Picture" Lewis continues: "At first I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time. Apart from that, I don't know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there, he pulled the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him." The major ideas of the book echo lines