No. 346 - Dufflepuds

My daughter and I went to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader today. Back-to-back movie days for me is unusual since I rarely go the movies.

In one scene there was some type of creature called Dufflepuds. They resembled a dwarf but with only one leg. I didn't recall such a creature in the novels. I read all of them in grade school and again about 10 years ago, but I may have only re-read a few of them.

After we got home, I grabbed my 50th anniversary hardcover edition to see if these Dufflepuds were actually in the story, or if someone created them for the movie version. They were indeed in the original book. Chapter Eleven is titled The Dufflepuds Made Happy. In the chapter I read:

Of course these little one-footed men couldn't walk or run as we do. They got about by jumping, like fleas or frogs. And what jumps they made!-as if each big foot were a mass of springs.

Wikipedia said that Dufflepuds looked liked other Narnian dwarves, aside from their monopodality; their one leg was usually about three feet long, and ended in a large foot, clad in a boat-shaped shoe. When they slept, each dwarf lay on their back with their foot in the air, acting as a kind of umbrella over them; creating a mushroom-like appearance, when viewed from a distance.

So I presume at some point in the past I may have known what a Dufflepud was. At the beginning of this day, I did not, but by the end I did.