Lore of the Unicorn

The connotations of the virgin-capture story are in fact definitely erotic, and the Christian interpretation put upon it does not harmonize with the tale exactly but seems to wrench it out of its natural course of development. In saying that the interpretation does not harmonize I refer to the difficulty of imagining the Virgin Mary as lending herself to a deliberate deception of her Son, the omniscient God. In saying that the story seems to have been wrenched out of its natural course I am thinking of what would probably have been done with it elsewhere. The Greeks, if they had been at all interested in animal allegories, might have made it a symbol of the overmastering power of erotic emotion, leading to the ruin of a strong, proud nature; the Hebrew poets might have used it somewhat as they did the great legend of Samson which it so curiously and perhaps significantly resembles--although Delilah is not a good surrogate for the virgin; but in Christian legend the story's original intention has been thwarted, I believe, to serve the purposes of edification. The attempt to point out what that original intention was, and so to solve, in some sense, the long-standing mystery of the virgin-capture story, may be postponed until we have followed the development of the story during the Christian ages.

Probably the earliest narration of the tale in literature outside of the Physiologus itself is that in the Commentary on Saint Basil's Hexaemeron, long attributed to Saint Eustathius of Antioch, who died about A.D. 330. This curious work weaves about Basil's poetic account of creation a tissue of popular legend which makes it good hunting-ground for the student of folklore. In most of its discussions of animals it drags a wide net through the sea of Levantine superstition, but the unicorn passage follows Physiologus in every detail, its only importance for our purpose consisting in the fact that here we see the virgin-capture story moving out into literature under its own sail, without assistance from allegory.

The next mention of the tale was far more influential, for it occurred in a work that was read, copied, imitated, and learned almost by heart for centuries, a work used as quarry and foundation by most of the "encyclopaedists" of the Middle Ages--writers who tried, not so unsuccessfully as might be supposed, to compress all human knowledge within a single book. Isidore of Seville, who died in 636, was one of the men who have exerted an influence upon human thought out of all proportion to their powers chiefly because of their strategic positions in time or place. Played upon by many forces, which he is incapable of criticizing or relating, his tendency is to shovel together rather helplessly all that he has read and heard. This tendency is evident in his important account of the unicorn, which I give myself the pleasure of quoting in John of Trevisa's English:--

"Rynoceron in grewe [i.e. in Greek] is to meanynge an Home in the nose. & Monoceros is an Unycorne: and is a ryght cruell beast. And hath that name for he hath in the mydull of the forehed an home of foure fote long. And that home is so sharpe & so stronge that he throwyth downe al or thyrleth al that he resyth on . . . . And this beest fyghtyth ofte wyth the Elyphaunt and woundyth & stycketh hym in the wombe, and throwyth hym downe to the grounde: And the Unycorn is so stronge that he is not take with myghte of hunters. But men that wryte of kynde of thinges meane that a mayde is sette there he shall come: And she openyth her lappe and the Unycorne layeth theron his heed, and levyth all his fyerinesse & slepyth in that wyse: And is taken as a beest wythout wepen & slayne wyth dartys of hunters."