Unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary creature usually depicted with the body of a horse, but with a single – usually spiral – horn growing out of its forehead (hence its name – cornus being Latin for 'horn'). The unicorn's blood and horn supposedly have mystical healing properties.
Overview
Though the modern popular image of the unicorn is sometimes that of a horse differing only in the horn, the traditional unicorn has a billy-goat beard, a lion's tail, and cloven hooves, which distinguish him from a horse.[1] Marianna Mayer has observed (The Unicorn and the Lake), "The unicorn is the only fabulous beast that does not seem to have been conceived out of human fears. In even the earliest references he is fierce yet good, selfless yet solitary, but always mysteriously beautiful. He could be captured only by unfair means, and his single horn was said to neutralize poison.
In medieval lore, the alicorn, the spiraled horn of the unicorn (the word "Alicorn" can also be the name for a winged unicorn/horned pegasus), is said to be able to heal and neutralize poisons. This virtue is derived from Ctesias's reports on the unicorn in India, that it was used by the rulers of that place to make drinking cups that would de-toxify poisons.
Though the qilin (麒麟, Chinese), a creature in Chinese mythology, is sometimes called "the Chinese unicorn", it is a hybrid animal that looks less unicorn than chimera, with the body of a deer, the head of a lion, green scales and a long forwardly-curved horn. The Japanese "Kirin", though based on the Chinese animal, is usually portrayed as more closely resembling the Western unicorn than the Chinese qilin.
Unicorns in prehistory
A prehistoric cave painting in Lascaux, France depicts an animal with two straight horns emerging from its forehead. The simplified profile perspective of the painting makes these two horns appear to be a single straight horn; since the species of the figure is otherwise unknown, it has received the moniker "the Unicorn". Richard Leakey suggests that it, like the Sorcerer found at Trois-Frères, is a therianthrope, a blend of animal and human; its head, in his interpretation, is that of a bearded man. [1]
There have been unconfirmed reports of aboriginal paintings of unicorns at Namaqualand in southern Africa. [2]. A passage of Bruce Chatwin's travel journal In Patagonia (1977) relates Chatwin's meeting a South American scientist who believed that unicorns were among South America's extinct megafauna of the Late Pleistocene, and that they were hunted out of existence by man in the fifth or sixth millennium B.C.E. He told Chatwin, who later sought them out, about two aboriginal cave paintings of "unicorns" at Lago Posadas (Cerro de los Indios).
Unicorns in antiquity
According to an interpretation of seals carved with an animal which resembles a bull (and which may in fact be a simplistic way of depicting bulls in profile), it has been claimed that the unicorn was a common symbol during the Indus Valley civilization, appearing on many seals. It may have symbolized a powerful social group.
An animal called the re'em is mentioned in several places in the Bible, often as a metaphor representing strength. "The allusions to the re'em as a wild, untamable animal of great strength and agility, with mighty horns (Job xxxix. 9-12; Ps. xxii. 21, xxix. 6; Num. xxiii. 22, xxiv. 8; Deut. xxxiii. 17; comp. Ps. xcii. 11), best fit the aurochs (Bos primigenius). This view is supported by the Assyrian rimu, which is often used as a metaphor of strength, and is depicted as a powerful, fierce, wild, or mountain bull with large horns."[2] This animal was often depicted in ancient Mesopotamian art in profile with only one horn visible.
The translators of the King James Version of the Bible (1611) employed unicorn to translate re'em— in Book of Job 39:9–12 and elsewhere—, providing a recognizable animal that was proverbial for its untamable nature for the unanswerable rhetorical questions:
"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?"
The unicorn is not found Greek mythology, but rather in Greek natural history and folklore, for Greek writers on natural history were convinced of the reality of the unicorn, which they located in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them. The Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) collects classical references to unicorns: the earliest description is from Ctesias, who described in Indica white wild asses, fleet of foot, having on the forehead a horn a cubit and a half in length, colored white, red and black; from the horn were made drinking cups which were a preventive of poisoning. Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the oryx, a kind of antelope, and the so-called "Indian ass" (in Historia animalis ii. I and De partibus animalium iii. 2). In Roman times Pliny's Natural History (viii: 30 and xi: 106) mentions the oryx and an Indian ox (the rhinoceros, perhaps) as one-horned beasts, as well as the Indian ass, "a very ferocious beast, similar in the rest of its body to a horse, with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, a deep, bellowing voice, and a single black horn, two cubits in length, standing out in the middle of its forehead." Pliny adds that "it cannot be taken alive." Aelian (De natura animalium iii. 41; iv. 52), quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse, and says (xvi. 20) that the monoceros was sometimes called carcazonon, which may be a form of the Arabic carcadn, meaning "rhinoceros". Strabo (book xv) says that in India there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads.
Medieval unicorns
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Medieval knowledge of the fabulous beast stemmed from biblical and ancient sources, and the creature was variously represented as a kind of wild ass, goat, or horse. By C.E. 200, Tertullian had called the unicorn a small fierce kidlike animal, and a symbol of Christ. Ambrose, Jerome and Basil agreed.
The predecessor of the medieval bestiary, compiled in Late Antiquity and known as Physiologus, popularized an elaborate allegory in which a unicorn, trapped by a maiden (representing the Virgin Mary) stood for the Incarnation. As soon as the unicorn sees her it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep. This became a basic emblematic tag that underlies medieval notions of the unicorn, justifying its appearance in every form of religious art.
The unicorn also figured in courtly terms: for some thirteenth-century French authors such as Thibaut of Champagne and Richard of Fournival, the lover is attracted to his lady as the unicorn is to the virgin. This courtly version of salvation provided an alternative to God's love and was assailed as heretical [citation needed]. With the rise of humanism, the unicorn also acquired more orthodox secular meanings, emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage. It plays this role in Petrarch's Triumph of Chastity.
The royal throne of Denmark was made of "unicorn horns". The same material was used for ceremonial cups because the unicorn's horn continued to be believed to neutralize poison, following classical authors.
The unicorn, tamable only by a virgin woman, was well established in medieval lore by the time Marco Polo described them as:
"scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant's. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead... They have a head like a wild boar's… They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions."
It is clear that Marco Polo was describing a rhinoceros. In German, since the sixteenth century, Einhorn ("one-horn") has become a descriptor of the various species of rhinoceros.
In popular belief, examined wittily and at length in the seventeenth century by Sir Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, unicorn horns could neutralize poisons (book III, ch. xxiii). Therefore, people who feared poisoning sometimes drank from goblets made of "unicorn horn". Alleged aphrodisiac qualities and other purported medicinal virtues also drove up the cost of "unicorn" products such as milk, hide, and offal. Unicorns were also said to be able to determine whether or not a woman was a virgin; in some tales, they could only be mounted by virgins.
The Hunt of the Unicorn
One traditional method of hunting unicorns involved entrapment by a virgin.
The famous late Gothic series of seven tapestry hangings, The Hunt of the Unicorn is a high point in European tapestry manufacture, combining both secular and religious themes. The tapestries now hang in the Cloisters division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In the series, richly dressed noblemen, accompanied by huntsmen and hounds, pursue a unicorn against millefleurs backgrounds or settings of buildings and gardens. They bring the animal to bay with the help of a maiden who traps it with her charms, appear to kill it, and bring it back to a castle; in the last and most famous panel, “The Unicorn in Captivity,” the unicorn is shown alive again and happy, chained to a pomegranate tree surrounded by a fence, in a field of flowers. Scholars conjecture that the red stains on its flanks are not blood but rather the juice from pomegranates, which were a symbol of fertility. However, the true meaning of the mysterious resurrected Unicorn in the last panel is unclear. The series was woven about 1500 in the Low Countries, probably Brussels or Liège, for an unknown patron. A set of six called the Dame à la licorne (Lady with the unicorn) at the Musée de Cluny, Paris, woven in the Southern Netherlands about the same time, pictures the five senses, the gateways to temptation, and finally Love ("A mon seul desir" the legend reads), with unicorns featured in each hanging.
Facsimiles of the unicorn tapestries are currently being woven for permanent display in Stirling Castle, Scotland, to take the place of a set recorded in the Castle in the 16th century.
Heraldry
In heraldry, a unicorn is depicted as a horse with a goat's cloven hooves and beard, a lion's tail, and a slender, spiral horn on its forehead. Whether because it was an emblem of the Incarnation or of the fearsome animal passions of raw nature, the unicorn was not widely used in early heraldry, but became popular from the fifteenth century. Though sometimes shown collared, which may perhaps be taken in some cases as an indication that it has been tamed or tempered, it is more usually shown collared with a broken chain attached, showing that it has broken free from its bondage and cannot be taken again.
It is probably best known from the royal arms of Scotland and the United Kingdom: two unicorns support the Scottish arms; a lion and a unicorn support the UK arms. The arms of the Society of Apothecaries in London has two golden unicorn supporters.
Possible origins
Alleged skeletal evidence
A unicorn skeleton was supposedly found at Einhornhöhle ("Unicorn Cave") in Germany's Harz Mountains in 1663. Claims that the so-called unicorn had only two legs (and was constructed from fossil bones of mammoths and other animals) are contradicted or explained by accounts that souvenir-seekers plundered the skeleton; these accounts further claim that, perhaps remarkably, the souvenir-hunters left the skull, with horn. The skeleton was examined by Leibniz, who had previously doubted the existence of the unicorn, but was convinced thereby.
Baron Georges Cuvier maintained that as the unicorn was cloven-hoofed it must therefore have a cloven skull (making impossible the growth of a single horn); to disprove this, Dr. W. Franklin Dove, a University of Maine professor, artificially fused the horn buds of a calf together, creating a one-horned bull. [3]
P.T. Barnum once exhibited a unicorn skeleton, which was exposed as a hoax.
Since the rhinoceros is the only known land animal to possess a single horn, it has often been supposed that the unicorn legend originated from encounters between Europeans and rhinoceroses. The Woolly Rhinoceros would have been quite familiar to Ice-Age people, or the legend may have been based on the surviving rhinoceroses of Africa. Europeans and West Asians have visited Sub-Saharan Africa for as long as we have records.
Chinese from the time of the Han Dynasty had also visited East Africa, which may account for their odd legends of 'one-horned ogres'. The Ming dynasty voyages of Zheng He brought back giraffes, which were identified by the Chinese with another creature from their own legends.
Elasmotherium
One suggestion is that the unicorn is based on an extinct animal sometimes called the "Giant Unicorn" but known to scientists as Elasmotherium, a huge Eurasian rhinoceros native to the steppes, south of the range of the woolly rhinoceros of Ice Age Europe. Elasmotherium looked little like a horse, but it had a large single horn in its forehead. It seems to have become extinct about the same time as the rest of the glacial age megafauna.
However, according to the Nordisk familjebok and to space scientist Willy Ley, the animal may have survived long enough to be remembered in the legends of the Evenk people of Russia as a huge black bull with a single horn in the forehead.
There is also a testimony by the medieval traveller Ibn Fadlan, who is usually considered a reliable source, which suggests that Elasmotherium may have survived into historical times:
- "There is nearby a wide steppe, and there dwells, it is told, an animal smaller than a camel, but taller than a bull. Its head is the head of a ram, and its tail is a bull’s tail. Its body is that of a mule and its hooves are like those of a bull. In the middle of its head it has a horn, thick and rouisnd, and as the horn goes higher, it narrows (to an end), until it is like a spearhead. Some of these horns grow to three or five ells, depending on the size of the animal. It thrives on the leaves of penof trees, which are excellent greenery. Whenever it sees a rider, it approaches and if the rider has a fast horse, the horse tries to escape by running fast, and if the beast overtakes them, it picks the rider out of the saddle with its horn, and tosses him in the air, and meets him with the point of the horn, and continues doing so until the rider dies. But it will not harm or hurt the horse in any way or manner.
- "The locals seek it in the steppe and in the forest until they can kill it. It is done so: they climb the tall trees between which the animal passes. It requires several bowmen with poisoned arrows; and when the beast is in between them, they shoot and wound it unto its death. And indeed I have seen three big bowls shaped like Yemen seashells, that the king has, and he told me that they are made out of that animal’s horn."
Even if Elasmotherium is not the creature described by Ibn Fadlan, ordinary rhinoceroses may have some relation to the unicorn. In support of this claim, it has been noted that the 13th century traveller Marco Polo claimed to have seen a unicorn in Java, but his description (quoted above) makes it clear to the modern reader that he actually saw a Javanese rhinoceros.
A mutant goat
The connection that is sometimes made with a single-horned goat derives from the vision of Daniel recorded in Book of Daniel 8:5:
- And as I was considering, behold, a he-goat came from the west over the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes.
which is soon exchanged for four horns, as a symbol of a great kingdom giving place to four monarchies.
In the domestic goat, a rare deformity of the generative tissues can cause the horns to be joined together; such an animal could be another possible inspiration for the legend. A farmer and a circus owner also produced fake unicorns, remodelling the "horn buttons" of goat kids, in such a way their horns grew deformed and joined in a grotesque seemingly single horn.In Japan Unicorns are depicted as one horned goats with beards called Kirin. [4]
The narwhal
Relics ornamented with supposed unicorn horns can be found in museums in Vienna and elsewhere in central Europe. However, these horns are in fact the spiral tusks of the narwhal, an Arctic cetacean (Monodon monoceros), as Danish zoologist Ole Worm established in 1638[5]. Presumably they were brought to central Europe as a trade item and sold as genuine unicorn horns, passing the various tests intended to spot fake unicorn horns.
The oryx
The oryx is an antelope with two long, thin horns projecting from its forehead. Some have suggested that seen from the side and from a distance, the oryx looks something like a horse with a single horn (although the 'horn' projects backward, not forward as in the classic unicorn). Conceivably, travellers in Arabia could have derived the tale of the unicorn from these animals. However, classical authors seem to distinguish clearly between oryxes and unicorns. The Peregrinatio in terram sanctam, published in 1486, was the first printed illustrated travel-book, describing a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and then Eygpt by way of Mount Sinai. It featured many large woodcuts by Erhard Reuwich, who went on the trip, mostly detailed and accurate views of cities. The book also contained pictures of animals seen on the journey, including a crocodile, camel, and unicorn - presumably an oryx, which they could easily have seen on their route.
The Eland
In Southern Africa the eland has somewhat mystical or spiritual connotations, perhaps at least partly because this very large antelope will defend itself and others against lions, and was able to kill these fearsome predators at a time when people had only slow-acting poisoned arrows to defend themselves with. Eland are very frequently depicted in the rock art of the region, which implies that they were viewed as having a strong connection to the other world, and in several languages the word for eland and for dance is the same; significant because shamans used dance as their means of drawing power from the other world. Eland fat was used when mixing the pigments for these pictographs, and in the preparation of many medicines. This special regard for the eland may well have been picked up by early travellers. In the area of Cape Town one horned eland are known to occur naturally, perhaps as the result of a recessive gene, and were noted in the diary of an early governor of the Cape[citation needed]. There is also a purported unicorn horn in the castle of the McLeod clan chief in Scotland, which has been identified as that of an eland.
Culture
Music
Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo's Unicornis Captivatur is a religious piece for choir a capella. The first verse concerns the Hunt of the Unicorn, in an anonymous text taken from the Engelberg Codex, 314:
Unicornis captivatur / Aule regum presentatur / Venatorum laqueo / Palo serpens est levatus / Medicatur sauciatus / Veneno vipereo
Which translates as:
The Unicorn is captured / and presented to the royal court / in the hunter’s snare / Stealthily, it frees itself from the pole / as it’s wounded, / it heals itself with the viper’s venom.
As the song is a hymn, it uses the Unicorn's Christian connotations, especially that of purification, as a metaphor for Christ.
Fiction
Modern fantasy fiction tends to perpetuate the medieval notion of a unicorn as a beast with magical qualities or powers.
Unicorns notably appear in:
- Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series
- Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn
- Peter S. Beagle's The Unicorn Sonata
- Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy
- Michael Bishop's Unicorn Mountain.........Note: not a children's book! At least PG-13.
- Terry Brooks's The Black Unicorn
- Bruce Coville's A Glory of Unicorns
- Bruce Coville's Into the Land of the Unicorns
- Bruce Coville's Song of the Wanderer
- Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage
- Neil Gaiman's Stardust
- Frank Graves's The Ancestral Trail
- Michael Green's De Historia Et Veritate Unicornis/On the History and Truth of the Unicorn
- David Lee Jones's Unicorn Highway
- Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory's The Outstretched Shadow
- Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory's To Light a Candle
- Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory's When Darkness Falls
- Madeline L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet and Many Waters
- John Lee's The Unicorn Quest series
- Tanith Lee's The Black Unicorn
- Tanith Lee's The Gold Unicorn
- Tanith Lee's The Red Unicorn
- C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle
- Anne McCaffrey's Acorna, The Unicorn Girl series
- Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
- John Peel's Diadem series
- Meredith Ann Pierce's Birth of the Firebringer Trilogy
- Rachel Roberts' Avalon series
- J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series
- Ridley Scott's Legend and Blade Runner (movies)
- Mary Stanton's Unicorns of Balinor series
- Osamu Tezuka's Unico
- James Thurber's short story, The Unicorn in the Garden
- Roger Zelazny's Amber novels
Unicorn skulls have magical properties in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami.
In an episode of The Simpsons, the unicorn (named "Gary") is seen trying to sneak Eve (played by Marge) back in the Garden of Eden and dies in the process, angering God (Ned Flanders) enough to banish her from the garden.
In season 2 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the Blue Ranger's Thunderzord is based upon the unicorn. However, in the Japanese series Gosei Sentai Dairanger (of which mecha footage was used for the Thunderzords), the Blue Ranger's mecha was Legendary Chi Beast Star Tenma (a pegasus). This is why there appear to be wing-like details on the sides of the Thunderzord. It was dubbed a unicorn in the Power Rangers franchise because of the laser on the head, which resembled a horn.
A unicorn is featured in the following video games:
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- Total Chaos: Battle at the Frontier of Time
- In Tales of Phantasia the Unicorn is a symbol of healing. Only pure maidens can approach it.
- In the game Tales of Symphonia the unicorn was said to be the symbol of death and rebirth.
- In Shrek Super Slam she is named under Anthrax as an unlockable character. Her slam is Chaos Clouds
- Final Fantasy X has a lightning summon named Ixion which is the shape of a unicorn
- The game Guild Wars: Factions features the "Chinese unicorn", the Kirin as both an ally, and as an enemy. Enemy kirin have the ability to raise their own allied dead.
Shel Silverstein wrote the song, "The Unicorn" containing the theory that unicorns went extinct because they didn't get on Noah's Ark. The song was popularized by the Irish Rovers. The Canadian indie-pop band The Unicorns also made reference to this concept in their song I Was Born (A Unicorn).
A young unicorn named "Uni" was a regular character in the animated series Dungeons & Dragons, which was based upon the role-playing game of the same name.
Neopets.com has a pet that you can create/adopt in the form of a cross between a unicorn and a pegasus (possessing both wings and a horn).
In the PC game Zoo Tycoon, using cheat codes, you can adopt a unicorn. In the game, the male unicorns have a black coat with orange hooves and mane, while the Females are the 'normal' white. Unicorn Offspring are zebra-striped until they are mature.
In the Eberron campaign setting for D&D, the unicorn is the heraldic beast of the dragonmarked House Orien.
In the Anime Area 88 Shin kazama's emblem is that of a Flaming unicorn, it is seen on the tail wing, orange on his Tiger 2 and Navy blue on his Crusader
In almost every folklore, there can never be more than one unicorn existing at any point in time.
The classic novel Moby Dick contains the comment "An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise present to her highness (Queen Elizabeth I) another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the unicorn nature." The Earl of Leicester was a long-time suitor of Elizabeth, and this can be interpreted as a sly, satirical reference by author Herman Melville to the Earl offering his "manhood" to the queen.
Alternative depictions in fiction
In Terry Pratchett's novel Lords and Ladies, the Queen of the Fairies keeps a Unicorn as a pet. Far from being a beautiful and graceful creature, it is a feral and foul-smelling beast whose first act is to stab a man to death with its horn. It is eventually snared using a noose made from a single hair from the head of a virgin, and is tamed after it is shod with silver shoes. As a creature from the world of the Elves it is able to sense electrical fields associated with organic life. It also has a strong aversion to iron, which distorts these fields.
Notes
External links
- All About Unicorns: Historical unicorn information, plus a gallery of unicorn pictures
- Medieval bestiary: unicorn bibliography
- Jewish Encyclopedia: "Unicorn"
- Rhinoceroses in the Roman arena
- The Unicorn Series (by Vicki Blum)
- The Cryptid Zoo: Unicorns in Cryptozoology
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Beer, Rüdiger Robert, Unicorn: Myth and Reality (1977). (Editions: ISBN 0-88405-583-3; ISBN 0-904069-15-X; ISBN 0-442-80583-7.)
- Chatwin, Bruce. 1977. In Patagonia. New York: Summit.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911: "Unicorn"
- Gotfredsen, Lise, The Unicorn (1999). (Editions: ISBN 0-7892-0595-5; ISBN 1-86046-267-7.) A richly illustrated cultural history.
- Shepard, Odell. The Lore of the Unicorn. (1930) text
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