Unicorn

Realm of the Pet! looks at the myth of the horse

that is the Unicorn!

Though the popular image is that of a white horse differing only in the horn, it traditional has a billy-goat beard, a lion's tail, and cloven hooves, which distinguish him from a horse.

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, is said to be able to heal and neutralize poisons. This virtue is derived from Ctesias's reports on this beast 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 version than the Chinese qilin.

Their Prehistory

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.

There have been unconfirmed reports of aboriginal paintings at Namaqualand in southern Africa.

A passage of Bruce Chatwin's travel journal In Patagonia (1977) relates Chatwin's meeting a South American scientist who believed that they 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 BC. He told Chatwin, who later sought them out, about two aboriginal cave paintings of "unicorns" at Lago Posadas (Cerro de los Indios).

Its Antiquity

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.

"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 beast 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 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-

Pliny adds that "it cannot be taken alive." Aelian (De natura animalium iii. 41, 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

The predecessor of the medieval bestiary, compiled in Late Antiquity and known as Physiologus, popularized an elaborate allegory in which, trapped by a maiden (representing the Virgin Mary) stood for the Incarnation.

As soon as it sees her it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep. This became a basic emblematic tag that underlies medieval notions of this animal, justifying its appearance in every form of religious art.

The royal throne of Denmark was made of this animals horns". The same material was used for ceremonial cups because its horn continued to be believed to neutralize poison, following classical authors.

This beast, 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 its horn.

Alleged aphrodisiac qualities and other purported medicinal virtues also drove up the cost of such products such as milk, hide, and offal. This creature 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.

Tapestry, Maiden with Unicorn, 15th century,(Musée de Cluny, Paris)

The Hunt of the Unicorn

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 the beast 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 animal 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 á 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 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

Though sometimes shown collared, which may perhaps be taken in

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.