How Do You Catch a Unicorn?
FEW MAGICAL CREATURES HAVE STRUCK the human
imagination as deeply as the elegant unicorn. Even in Harry’s
wizard world, with so many wondrous beasts, the unicorn is a symbol
of the sacred. In Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone, J. K. Rowling says unicorns have “silvery”
blood; and in Harry Potter and the Goblet of
Fire she describes unicorn
The Unicorn in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-glass, like everything else in
the story, is the opposite of what you would expect: He is anything
but peaceful—in fact he casually sticks other creatures with his
horn. And when he is introduced to Alice, he is the one surprised
to meet a human: “I always thought they were fabulous [mythical]
monsters! . . . Is it alive?”
foals that are “pure gold,” adding that their
coats will turn silver around age two, and “go pure white” when the
unicorns mature.
ANCIENT UNICORNS
Unicorns appear in the ancient art and myths of
Mesopotamia, China, and India. The Roman naturalist Pliny, relying
on reports he had heard, listed a few varieties of unicorns, each
with horns of about two cubits (three feet) on its forehead: one,
“a most swift beast,” could mimic a human voice; another could move
its horn at will, to use as a weapon; and yet another had skin that
“cannot be pierced.”
A traveler from the early 1500s saw two unicorns
at the temple of Mecca:
The elder is formed like a colt of thirty months old, and he has a horn in the forehead, which horn is about as long as three arms. The other unicorn is like a colt of one year old, and he has a horn of about one foot long. The colour of the said animal resembles that of a dark bay horse, and his head resembles that of a stag; his neck is not very long, and he has some thin and short hair which hangs on one side; his legs are slender and lean like those of a goat; the foot is a little cloven in the fore part, and long and goatlike, and there are some hairs on the hind part of the said legs. Truly this monster must be a very fierce and solitary animal. These two animals were presented to the Sultan of Mecca as the finest things that could be found in the world at the present day, and as the richest treasure ever sent by a king of Ethiopia, that is, by a Moorish king. He made this present in order to secure an alliance with the said Sultan of Mecca.
Pliny reported that the unicorn can “never become tamed.” William Shakespeare referred to the same elusive nature: “Time’s glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light . . . to tame the unicorn and lion wild.”
Other writers suggest the trick is to bait the
unicorn with a young virgin—and although this method has never been
successfully employed, it fits with the unicorn’s role as a symbol
of purity and chastity. Many medieval tapestries portray scenes of
unicorns to convey the power of sacred devotion. The Old Testament
refers to unicorns several times: “God brought them out of Egypt;
he hath as it
were the strength of the unicorn” (Numbers 23:22); “His horns are
like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people
together to the ends of the earth” (Deuteronomy 33:17); “My horn
shall thou exalt like the horn of a unicorn” (Psalms 92:10); “Will
the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide in thy crib?” (Job
39:9). These references, to some scholars, indicate that the
unicorn is actually a symbol of Christ. Others disagree. The word
in the original text would be better translated as “wild ox.”
Perhaps the translators of the King James Version (1611)
Unicorn appearing on a family crest.
were influenced by the knowledge that their patron, King James I of
Britain, considered the unicorn his emblem.
Chinese legend also mentions a sacred unicorn with
a deer’s body, ox’s tail, and horse’s hooves. Its coat is five
different colors. It lives 1,000 years.
Unicorn appearing on a family crest.
HORN OF PLENTY
The unicorn’s ability to save one’s body as well
as one’s soul has always been a part of its legend. Ctesias, a
Greek physician in the employ of the ruler of Persia around 400
B.C., wrote one of the first accounts of the creature:
There are in India certain wild asses which are as large as horses, and larger. Their bodies are white, their heads dark red, and their eyes dark blue. They have a horn on the forehead that is about a foot and a half in length. The dust filed from this horn is administered in a potion as a protection against deadly drugs. The base of this horn, for some two hands’-breadth above the brow, is pure white; the upper part is sharp and of a vivid crimson; and the remainder, or middle portion, is black. Those who drink out of these horns, made into drinking vessels, are not subject, they say, to convulsions or to the holy disease [epilepsy]. Indeed, they are immune even to poisons if either before
The unicorn was the emblem of Scotland’s royal
House of Stuart. James VI of Scotland, upon becoming James I of Britain in 1603, added the unicorn to the
British coat of arms, opposite the English lion. It is said to
represent Scotland’s independent spirit. In The
Faerie Queen (1596), Edmund Spenser mentions the “Lion, whose
imperial power a proud rebellious Unicorn defies.”
In modern Hebrew, re’em
refers to a horned gazelle, says Gili Bar-Hillel, the translator of
Rowling’s works into Hebrew, who helped uncover the biblical
source. No doubt that animal inspired some early descriptions of
unicorns.
See also: Centaurs Forest
These medicinal qualities, so important to the critically ill like Voldemort—who kills a unicorn to drink its life-sustaining blood—once made the unicorn an object of hunters. (Of course those hunters were frustrated.)
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN
Close readers of Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them may have
noticed that a similar healing power is mentioned for the magical
creature called the Re’em. Its blood, although hard to come by,
“gives the drinker immense strength.” That’s a very sly connection
by Rowling. The Hebrew word that the translators of the King James
Bible turned into “unicorn” is re’em.
Rowling’s animal combines the original Hebrew meaning with
qualities later associated with unicorns. Like the biblical
animals, Rowling’s Re’em are “giant oxen.” Like unicorns, they are
“extremely rare” and capturing them is difficult.