Deer modern Germanic languages save English and Scots retain the more general sense: for example, German "Tier" and Norwegian "dyr" mean "animal". For many types of deer in modern English usage, the male is a "buck" and the female a "doe", but the terms vary with dialect, and according to the size of the species. The male red deer is a "stag", while for other large species the male is a "bull", the female a "cow", as in cattle. In older usage, the male of any species is a "hart", especially if over five years old, and the female is a
White stag James Thurber's whimsical fairy tale "The White Deer" is transformed into a young woman when trapped by hunters, but her only memories are of fields and trees so no one is sure if she was originally a deer or a princess. The white stag played an important role in C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" novel. The Pevensie children (now grown-up kings and queens) hunt the Stag, hoping to gain wishes for catching it. It is in their pursuit of the Stag that they stumble back through the wardrobe and into their own world, returned to childhood.