The second installment of my 1000 word challenge is brought to you by Paula Eddy of the USA. While she was not fussed with the style, she did provide this awesome picture ...
Do Unicorns exist? Have they ever existsed? Did they ever look like the one in this picture? Will the exist at some point in the future? It's strange, the idea of the unicorn, for the simple face that it's not really all that strange an idea. Horses exist, of that I am certain, having seen one with my own two eyes. Animals with horns exist, they too I have seen (Rhino's and Narwhals to name but two). But never a Unicorn. Alas, not a single one to have ever graced my presence.
One of my favourite quotes is about Unicorns. It comes from the Tom Stoppard play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" and it goes as follows:
A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds or, to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; unil - "My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience ... "Look, look!" recites the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It mustlve been mistaken for a deer." I'm sorry it wasn't a unicorm. It would have been nice to have unicorns. (Guildenstern, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead")
This quote epitomises the whole modern need to rationalise that which we do not understand. The unwillingness as a society to step outside the norms is evident in many aspects of alternative cuture. From witchcraft and magic to alien encounters to beasts of legend, the story is the same. We try to find a neat little hole to put the annectdotes in, to make those abberations fit neatly into the grand scheme of things.
There is plenty of literary evidence for Unicorns, from the early Chinese to Greek philosophers to African legends, but what real evidence is there, if any? There are plenty of historic heroes who claim to have seen or even riden the elusive Unicorn. No categorical evidence exists either for or against the Unicorn. There is no reason why it can't exist, perhaps it is just nature's twist of fate that such an animal, which could so easily possibly be real, is neither real or inspired by real animals, save the horse. It's a far more likely target for having existed that, for example, Pegasus. After all the wing span needed to lift the body of a fully grown horse would far exceed that which would be practical for the poor, unfortunate animal. A Unicorn's horn, however, does not pose any logicial or physical problems to its potential existence.
Many medieval merchants who sold "Unicorn Horns" at market stalls and many other places were actually selling Narwhal horns but what if they were really Unicorn horns? What if they existed and poachers caused their extinction? If this were true, of course, there would be DNA evidence to differentiate the Unicorn from the Narwhal. The horn was sold as decoration, charm and magical item.
I think that some of the Medieval "sightings" of Unicorns were highly decorated horses, possibly battle ready. Another theory I have is that the viewer saw knights practicing jousting, their long lance being mistaken for the horn when seen from the side. Of course I have no evidence for either of these theories, I just like the absurd logic to it all.
There were beliefs surrounding the Unicorn regarding it magical properties, usually held within its ho It seern. Some require the horn to be ground up and used as an ingredient, some require the horn to be hollowed out and used as a vessel. Whichever method you so choose to follow, it is highly unlikely that the horn possessed any form of magical properties even if it had actaully existed.
There is a Ukranian legend which asserts that Unicorn existed until the great biblical flood but that the Unicorn had boasted that it would swim instead of boarding the Ark and when the waters receeded the Unicorn was no more. I quite like the idea of Unicorns being real and herds of them roaming through the forests of Europe, much like wild horses. I think that if this were the case there would be many more reported sightings and, these days, much more impirical evidence of their existence.
I have, until now, forcused on the modern visual of the Unicorn (being basically a horse with a horn), yet in Chinese tradition the Unicorn is very different. Called the Quilin, it has the body of a deer, the head of a lion, scales and a long froth-covered horn. This image is far more in keeping with a dragonesque notion of mystical creatures. It is also a far darker image that the friendly picture of the western Unicorn.
The advent of scientific thought has spelled the death-knell for the Unicorn. It has been relegated to that category of mythical beast, with not even the status of the Yeti or Loch Ness Monster. They at least still have people searching for them despite the seemingly equal propostrousness of their existence. It seems no-one is willing to search for this apparently fabled creature when it is equally as likely that it exists, or has existed at some time in the past.
Like Guildenstern, I too think it would be nice to have Unicorns. These days little girls dream of owning horses but imagine if you could own a Unicorn ... wouldn't it be magical?
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