Hello everyone, I'm WhispersInTheDark07 and I will be telling you about the latest information about unicorns.
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You see, a unicorn is a legendary animal to have been described as a beast with a large, pointed, spirally horn sticking out of its head.
In European folklore, the unicorn is often described as a white horselike or goatlike animal with a long horn and cloven hooves (sometimes a goat's beard). In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was mainly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could only be captured by a virgin. In the encyclopedias its horn was said to have the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In medieval and Renaissance times, the horn of the narwhal was sometimes sold as unicorn horn.
Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology, but rather in accounts of natural history, for Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of the unicorn, which they located in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them. The earliest description is from Ctesias who, in his book Indika, described them as wild donkies, fleet of foot, having a horn a cubit and a half (27 inches) in length, and colored white, red and black.Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the oryx (a kind of antelope) and the so-called "Indian ass".Strabo says that in the Caucasus there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads.Pliny the Elder mentions the oryx and an Indian ox (perhaps a rhinoceros) as one-horned beasts, as well as "a very fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead, two cubits in length.In On the Nature of Animals, Aelian, quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse and says that the monoceros was sometimes called cartazonos, which may be a form of the Arabic karkadann, meaning "rhinoceros".
The unicorn, can only be tamed 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 16th century, Einhorn ("one-horn") has become a descriptor of the various species of rhinoceros.
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That sounds a lot different than the unicorns we know today, huh? The unicorns we know usually fart out rainbows, throw up glitter glue, and eat butterflies........ But, that's a unicorn, so yeah..... Anyways, I hope you enjoyed it, and next month issue will be about... well, it's a surprise....
