When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark,
[Uncle Andrew] had realized that the noise was a song.
And he had disliked the song /very much.
It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel.
Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (“only a lion,” as he said to himself)
he tried his hardest to make believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing
—only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world.
“Of course it can’t really have been singing,” he thought,
“I must have imagined it.
I’ve been letting [my nerves] [get out of order].
Who ever heard of a lion singing?”
And the longer and more beautifully the Lion sang,
the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring.
Now [the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are] is that you very often succeed.
Uncle Andrew did.
He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song.
Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else /even if he had wanted to.
And when at last the Lion spoke and said, “Narnia, awake,” he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl.
And when the Beasts spoke /in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, baying, and howlings.
From The Magician's Nephew
Compiled in A Year with Aslan