The Lore of the Unicorn
by Odell Shepard
Chapter VII – Rumours
THE first point that research into a doubtful matter should try to determine, as Andrea Bacci wisely observes, is whether the thing in question really exists; and if we were concerned in this book with the unicorn itself rather than with unicorn lore there could be no excuse for having postponed for so long the question concerning the animal’s actuality. That question cannot be entirely ignored because the doubts that have been expressed and the affirmations made in reply are themselves an important part of unicorn lore.
To anyone not instructed in comparative anatomy the unicorn is so credible a beast that it is difficult to understand why anyone should ever have doubted him. Compared with him the giraffe is highly improbable, the armadillo and the ant-eater are unbelievable, and the hippopotamus is a nightmare. The shortest excursion into palaeontology brings back a dozen animals that strain our powers of belief far more than he does. What may be called the normality of the unicorn is just as evident when we set him beside the creatures of fancy. Compared with him the griffin is precisely what Sir Thomas Browne calls it, “a mixed and dubious animal”.
Yet it is well known that the unicorn has been doubted, and that not by natural infidels like Pare and Marini and Cuvier alone, but by natural believers living far back in the Ages of Faith. Saint Ambrose, for example, disbelieved in the animal for the strange reason that it was not to be found, or so he thought, in nature–“non inveniatur”. One might have made sad havoc in the theological creed of Ambrose or any other early Christian by applying that brutal test, and we can imagine the flood of invective he would have poured forth upon the pagan who dared to write “non inveniatur” against the Apostolic miracles. However, I wish to devote this chapter to affirmations, recording the testimony of those who have kept the good faith and of the many others who, having fallen away into agnosticism or free-thinking or positive infidelity, have been brought back into the fold. The list of these affirmations will necessarily involve some writers that I have mentioned elsewhere.
One of the earliest of these, aside from the Ctesian and the Physiologus traditions, was that of Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Greek of Alexandria who spent his young manhood travelling as a merchant in Ethiopia, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. In his Christian Topography, written about A.D. 5 50, Cosmas writes: “Although I have not seen the unicorn, I have seen four brazen figures of him in the four-towered palace of the King of Ethiopia, and from these figures I have been able to draw a picture of him as you see. People say that he is a terrible beast and quite invincible, and that all his strength lies in his horn. When he finds himself pursued by many hunters and about to be taken he springs to the top of some precipice and throws himself over it, and in the descent he turns a somersault so that the horn sustains all the shock of the fall and he escapes unhurt.”
Cosmas’s ingenuous admission that he has not seen the living animal inclines one to believe that he did see the brazen images. These must have been figures in the round rather than bas-reliefs, so that their single horns could not well have been due to the well known convention of ancient art which often led to the representation of one horn where two were to be understood; we may be fairly confident, therefore, that there existed in Ethiopia during the sixth century of our era an active belief in a one-horned animal. The drawing of this animal which accompanies the text in the Vatican manuscript of Cosmas is more interesting than the description. It shows a beast of the antelope kind, apparently not large, very spirited in bearing, with a horn almost as tall as itself jutting per- pendicularly from between its brows. The moment one sees this drawing the unicorn of Physiologus comes to mind. One remembers that the feat of absorbing the shock of a fall by an elastic or possibly spring-like horn has been attributed also to the ibex, to the African oryx, and to the Rocky Mountain goat. Finally, it is not to be ignored that Cosmas found these brazen unicorns in the palace of a king.
In the year 1206, we are told, the conqueror Genghis Khan set out with a great host to invade India. His army had marched for many days and had climbed through many mountain passes, but just when he reached the crest of the divide and looked down over the country he intended to subjugate there came running toward him a beast with a single horn which bent the knee three times before him in token of reverence. And then, while all the host stood wondering, the Conqueror paused in his march and pondered. At last he said, as we are told in the vivid narrative of Ssanang Ssetsen: “This middle kingdom of India before us is the place, men say, in which the sublime Buddha and the Bodhisatwas and many powerful princes of old time were born. What may it mean that this speechless wild animal bows before me like a man? Is it that the spirit of my father would send me a warning out of heaven?” With these words he turned his army about and marched back again into his own land. India had been saved by a unicorn.
In several versions of the Alexander Romance we read that Alexander’s host, while travelling near the Red Sea, met a number of beasts with single horns, sharp as swords, on their foreheads. They were very strong and fierce and charged the host again and again, but they were killed by arrows. The description is not clear enough to show that they were the unicorns we know.
The Friar Felix Fabri, who went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1483, says that on the twentieth of September in that year he and his company saw standing on a hill near Mount Sinai a large animal gazing toward them. At first they took it for a camel, but their guide told them that it was a unicorn and pointed out the great single horn on its brow, so that they examined it as closely as they could and were sorry that it was too far away to be seen quite clearly. They lingered there a long while watching the beast, which seemed to enjoy the sight of them as much as they did the sight of it, for it did not leave until they did. This beast, the friar adds, is remarkable in many ways: it is exceedingly wild and destroys everything that comes in its way; it sharpens its horn on stones; the horn has a brilliant hue and is set in gold and silver; the animal can be captured only by using a virgin as a decoy.
The most important of all descriptions of the unicorn given by the few who claim to have seen the animal is that of Lewis Vartoman (Ludovico Barthema), of Bologna, who travelled in 1503 through the countries of the Near East. Vartoman’s Itinerario is a book of sustained interest and some historical value, although the modern reader is unlikely to share Scaliger’s opinion that its author was a man worthy of trust. At the city of Zeila in Ethiopia he saw certain cattle with single horns about a palm and a half in length rising from their brows and bending backward, but much more important than these were the unicorns in a park adjoining the temple at Mecca. There were two of these animals, “shewed to the people for a miracle, and not without reason for the seldomenesse and strange nature. The one of them, which is much hygher than the other, yet not much unlyke to a coolte of thyrtye moneths of age, in the forehead groweth only one horne, in maner ryght foorth, of the length of three cubites. The other is much younger, of the age of one yeere, and lyke a young coolte: the horne of this is of the length of foure handfuls. This beast is of the coloure of a horse of weesel coloure, and hath the head lyke an hart, but no long necke, a thynne mane hangynge only on the one syde. Theyr legges are thyn and slender, lyke a fawne or hynde. The hoofes of the fore feete are divided in two, much lyke the feet of a Goat. The outwarde part of the hynder feete is very full of heare. This beast doubtlesse seemeth wylde and fierce, yet tempereth that fiercenesse with a certain comelinesse. These Unicornes one gave to the Soltan of Mecha as a most precious and rare gyfte. They were sent hym out of Ethiope by a kyng of that Countrey, who desired by that present to gratifie the Soltan of Mecha.”
This passage was almost as influential among modern writers as the remarks of Aeian about the unicorn had been during the Middle Ages. One is to observe that the hoofs of Vartoman’s unicorns are divided on the fore feet and, apparently, solid behind–a peculiar characteristic faithfully observed by the artist who drew the unicorn picture for Conrad Gesner’s Historia Animalium and by all who imitated him. We should observe also that these unicorns came from Ethiopia and that they were sent as a present from one sovereign to another.
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