Why kill the unicorn?
British Library, Royal MS 12 F. xiii, Folio 10v.
So, you want to catch a unicorn. As we all know, the unicorn is a swift and fierce beast, not to be caught by ordinary means. But there is a way: find a pure and virgin girl, sit her down in unicorn habitat, hide in the bushes clutching your spear, and wait. A unicorn will come along, and charmed by the girl’s purity, will lie down with its head in her lap. Once the unicorn is nicely settled in and comfy, you leap out of the bushes and slaughter the beast.
No wonder there are so few unicorns left in the wild.
But why kill the unicorn? Wouldn’t a live unicorn give you more bragging rights than a bloody corpse? Yet in the majority of maiden-and-unicorn illustrations in medieval manuscripts, the unicorn is being killed.
It is killed with spears, it is killed with swords…
Museum Meermanno, MMW, 10 B 25, Folio 4v
…it is killed with arrows…
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KB, 78 D 40, Folio 149v
…it is even killed with swords and spears and with an ax in reserve just in case…
British Library, Harley MS 4751, Folio 6v
There’s got to be a reason for all this mayhem.
One possibility is the value of the unicorn’s horn. Dipped in the king’s cup of wine it would reveal the presence of poison placed there by the dastardly duke; if the king was poisoned anyway, he could be cured with the horn. Powdered horn was also known to be a powerful aphrodisiac, as rhinoceros horn is now. Useful thing, a unicorn horn, and difficult to get from a live beast, so it has to be slaughtered.
<digression>Unicorn horns are also very beautiful. I saw and handled one once: a fellow student brought it to a Medieval Cosmology class and passed it around. Her grandfather or great-grandfather had acquired it somewhere, years before, and passed it down the generations. It was about as long as my arm, a rich ivory color, smooth and heavy, and spiraled to a sharp tip. Of course it wasn’t a “real” unicorn’s horn, though it would certainly have fooled a medieval king. It was a narwhal (Monodon monoceros) horn, which is not really a horn, but a very long tooth.
Swarming into an ice hole, males wield their tusks with care.
Photo by Paul Nicklen, from National Geographic.
How, you may be wondering, did the narwhal become confused with the unicorn? Perhaps it was like this:
“So prized was the fabled tooth of the unicorn that Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century paid 10,000 pounds for one, equivalent to the cost of an entire castle”, says narwhal.org. Beautiful. I wanted the one I saw; I can’t image a queen or king being able to resist.</digression>
While a medieval hunter-of-unicorns might find it expedient to kill the beast for its horn, this does not really explain the type and level of violence shown in the illustrations, and it definitely does not explain why the unicorn killers in many illustrations are soldiers. There is more going on here. The basic symbolism of the unicorn is clearly stated in the bestiary: it says that the unicorn represents Christ, who descended to the womb of the virgin Mary, was captured by the Jews, and was crucified. The unicorn’s swiftness and fierceness indicates Christ’s power, that none could take him by force, but only by his willing surrender. While some bestiary versions say the unicorn is captured and taken to the king’s palace, others don’t say what happens to it; the killing of the unicorn is only hinted at through the reference to crucification. That hint seems to have been enough for the illustrators: the unicorn is Christ, so must die violently as Christ died violently, at the hands of the Jews (depicted as civilians) and/or the Romans (depicted as soldiers).
And what are we to make of the maiden’s betrayal of the trusting unicorn? Well, we can’t be sure she was in on the trick; maybe she didn’t know the true intent of the hunters. In some illustrations, the maiden seems upset at the killing:
Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 1633 4º, Folio 5v
“Hey!”, she says, “why you kill my unicorn?” and gives the startled hunter-of-unicorns a slap with her big left hand.
So, fair maidens, if they lead you off to the unicorn forest, watch out for guys with spears in the bushes; only you can prevent unicorn killing.
Filed in Articles 14 Comments so far
Jennifer Lynn on 22 May 2008 at 7:53 am #
Speaking as the purest of pure maidens out there, I solemnly vow to protect the unicorn with my very life. Long live the unicorn!
Anne on 07 Jul 2008 at 12:32 pm #
well im a pure madien too and id never let any one harm a unicorn i feel their bringers of love and peace and should be protected also theys comfort you through sadness and times of trouble God bless the unicorns
Chair on 08 Sep 2008 at 6:51 pm #
Hello! I just stumbled across your site and blog while researching what I could on-line on the medieval bestiaries for some artwork. (I’m madly in love with the Aberdeen Bestiary.)
I love your sense of humour (“Why you kill my unicorn?”) I’m also tickled to see you’re relatively local (I’m in central Alberta). I will certainly be stopping in regularly, thanks for the compilation of information and you’re thoughts on the subjects.
🙂
mary-doll on 17 Oct 2008 at 7:40 am #
they unicorns would be safe now, my judgement obtained by watching students tells me there are not many pure and charming maidens left out there 🙂
ursula on 21 Oct 2008 at 3:42 am #
awesome work ….I’m researching for some artwork and this is a great resourse!!
Victor on 26 Oct 2008 at 1:33 am #
I was under the impression the hunters (poachers, black market dealers whatever you want to call them) merely sawed off the unicorn horn leaving the unicorn to go back to the wild and die naturally due to their lack of a protective weapon.
Hannah Kilpatrick on 04 Nov 2008 at 3:44 am #
Hi,
I just stumbled across your blog and am very much enjoying reading the backposts! I just thought I’d comment on this because I have a very similar image on my hard drive – the same basic scenario, with some interesting differences – and thought I should link to it in case you hadn’t seen it. Besides, it has a cute grotesque in the corner.
I posted about it on my blog, with reference back to this post. Of course, if you prefer I not do that, I’ll delete the post.
(I do like the fact that many of those images you posted show the evolution of the unicorn from a goatish creature to something more horse-shaped!)
Barrie Evans on 09 Dec 2008 at 6:48 pm #
What about the tapestries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Cloisters)? A majority of the tapestries do not show the unicorn being killed but being pursued. There’s also a suggestion that, like Christ, he rises from death.
I love the blog, however, and don’t think we have enough bestiaries even though there are plenty of beasts to fill them.
Beastmaster on 09 Dec 2008 at 8:33 pm #
The Unicorn Tapestries were produced around 1500, which is later than most bestiaries. Perhaps by that time the traditional unicorn hunt (one mail-clad soldier stabbing with a spear or sword) had become a kinder, gentler, more festive affair… or not, since there still seems to be a lot of spear thrusting going on, at least in that tapestry. One unicorn captured, one killed: still a net loss for the unicorn population.
gaill ann on 03 May 2009 at 7:52 am #
Hi, just stumbled across your website and had a possible answer to your question.
The Freudian approach is easy to apply to our collective mythology… the unicorn actually represents a man’s attempt to woo or rape the maiden- you’ll note that the horn is very phallic and is often pointing directly at the maiden’s lap… and is killed by the maiden’s betrothed/ father/ brother/ etc. perhaps in dome instances it’s the maiden’s secret lover and in others it’s an attacker.
The man who is, or is attempting to, take the maiden’s virginity, is represented as a beast to represent his lowliness or his animal lusts.
The unicorn is chosen to represent him because it has one horn and can only be touched by a maiden (and only captured by gold), making it perfect euphemism material.
The opposite angle is that the unicorn was a creature made up to describe this situation.
me ow on 05 Aug 2011 at 3:08 pm #
did you know Genghis Khan and his army was stop’t by a unicorn?
he was going to india and the unicorn stood in his path.
and the unicorn bow’d to Genghis Khan.
so he bows back. and turns back!
Unicorns and dragons are in history from england to japan.
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Anonymous on 20 Oct 2014 at 4:15 pm #
I feel that a maiden relinquishes her “purity” when she aids in the slaughter of an innocent unicorn.
Riley on 26 Aug 2020 at 9:02 pm #
Long shot here… could a broken horn kill a unicorn? Because, while it is just bone coming out of the head, it’s also connected to wherever unicorns draw their magic from. And would it be the fact that their horn is broken, the trauma of the break, or the trauma of being severed from their source of magic, that would kill it? Or could it survive such a thing? Would it become something else?