Archiwum
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- Dickson_Helen_ _Harlequin_Romans_Historyczny__274_ _Zakochany_lajdak
- Historyczne Bitwy Cajamarca 1532, Andrzej TarczyĹski
- Cornick Nicola Romans Historyczny 111 Mezalians
- Sandemo Margit Dziewica z lasu mgieĹ(historyczny)
- Historia malzenska dla doroslyc Antczak Radoslaw
- Antoni Czechow Historie zakulisowe
- arkusz finalowy historyczny
- HISTORIA DEL ANĂLISIS ECONĂMICO
- Balcerzan Edward Przygody czĹowieka ksiÄ Ĺźkowego
- Edward Balcerzan Liryka Juliana Przybosia
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- epicusfuror.xlx.pl
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Of his fiers foe, him to a tree applyes,
And when him ronning in full course he spyes
He slips aside: the whiles that furious beast
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His precious horne, sought of his enemyes6
Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast,
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But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast 7
In Timon of Athens Shakespeare writes: Wert thou the Unicorn pride and
wrath would confound thee, and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury,
and in Julius Caesar we find the line: Unicorns may be betray d with trees,
both passages evidently referring to this legend.
Most furious of all beasts was the Monoceros; or, as lian calls it, the
Cartazonos, a creature still having literary and heraldic existence as the unicorn;
though in some few points the beast, as described by Pliny and others, does not
altogether resemble in form the creature of the heralds that is so well known to
us as joint supporter with the lion of our national arms. The ancient monoceros
had the body of a horse, the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, and the tail of
a boar, and from the middle of his forehead projected a single horn.
The Monoceros, Unicornu, or Einhorn is described in Jonston s Historia
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Naturalis, published in 1657, and Munster, in his description of Asia,8 gives a
picture of the unicorn, a beast in all respects like a horse, save that it has one
tremendous horn. Barrow, in his Travels in Southern Africa, gives the figure of
a head of a unicorn which he saw drawn on the side of a cavern, and appears to
entertain no doubt that such an animal exists, while Burton tells us that in thiopia
some Kine there are which have Horns like Stags, others but one Horn only, and
that in the Forehead, about a foot and a half long, but bending backwards, a
departure this from the recognized type.
Figures of the unicorn are found on the archaic cylinder seals of Assyria and
Babylonia, and throughout the whole course of ancient and mediaeval history we
find belief in the creature as much a matter of course as belief in horse or
elephant, and it would not be difficult to bring forward a score or more of authors
who have written even in comparatively recent times on the existence of the
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unicorn.9
In a curious old book on our shelf, the Philosophical Grammar of Benjamin
Martin, published in 1753, the author raises the question as to whether such
creatures as the phoenix, syrens, dragons, mermaids, fairies, and many others
that he mentions really exist, and in the matter of the unicorn he evidently suspends
judgment. Most naturalists, he says, have affirmed that there have been such
creatures and give descriptions of them; but the sight of the creatures or credible
relations of them having been so rare, has occasioned many to believe there never
were any such animals in nature; at least it has made the history of them very
doubtful. In all such ambiguous pieces of history tis better not to be positive, and
sometimes to suspend our belief rather than credulously embrace every current
report. In another book, however, published in 1786, and therefore not much
more than a century ago, the unicorn is described in all sober seriousness as
having equine body, a voice like the lowing of an ox, and his horn as hard as iron
and as rough as any file to the touch.
Guillim declares that the unicorn cannot be taken alive, the greatness of his
mind is such that he chuseth rather to die, while De Thaun gives full directions
for its capture. It would appear that the animal is of a particularly impressionable
nature, and is always prepared to pay homage to maiden beauty and innocence,
hence fierce as it is the wily hunter by taking advantage of this amiable trait in its
character effects its capture, for when a man intends to hunt and ensnare it he
goes to the forest where is its repair, and there places a virgin. Then it comes to
the virgin, falls asleep on her lap, and so comes to its death. The man arrives
immediately and kills it in its sleep, or takes it alive, and does as he will with it.
As this must be rather a trying experience for the young lady, the Indian and
Ethiopians, says a later writer, catch of these unicornes which be in their country
after the following manner. They take a goodly-strong and beautifull young man,
whom they clothe in the apparell of a woman, besetting him with divers flowers
and odoriferous spices, setting him where the Unicornes use to come, and when
they see this young man they come very lovingly and lay their heads down in his
lap (for above all creatures they do great reverence to young maids), and then
the hunters having notice given them, suddenly come, and finding him asleep,
they will deal so with him, as that before he goeth he must leave his horn behind
him and fall a victim to his guileful foes. Spenser speaks of the maiden
Unicorne, and Dallaway, too, refers to their inviolable attachment to virginity,
and many other writers speak in the same sense, or shall we rather say lack of it!
The horn was in great demand as it was made into drinking vessels that were
held to possess the invaluable gift of detecting poison. Thus in the Speculum
Mundi we read of it that it hath many soveraigne virtues, insomuch that, being
put upon a table furnished with many junkets and banqueting dishes, it will quickly
descrie whether there be any poyson or venime among them, for if there be, the
horne is presently covered with a kinde of sweat or dew. This belief in the efficacy
of the horn of the unicorn as a test for poisons is seen by the frequent appearance
of it in mediaeval inventories. We gather from these no clue, no alternative name,
for instance, to guide us, as to what the material so valued really was. In a book of
travels by one Hentzner, a foreigner who visited England in the year 1598, mention is
made of a horn of the unicorn that he was shown at Windsor Castle, and which
he says was valued at over 1000, as indeed it very well might be, if Decker s line,
the unicorn whose horn is worth a city, written in 1609, gives anything like a fair
estimate of its worth. In the Comptes Royaux of France for 1391 we find the
entry: Une manche d or d un essay de lincourne pour attoucher aux viandes de
Monseigneur le Dauphin, and in the year 1536 in the inventory of the treasures of
Charles V., we have: Une touche de licorne, garnie d or, pour faire essay. Many
other examples of a similar nature might readily be brought forward. It seems
strange that a belief in the efficacy of the horn of the unicorn to detect the presence
of poisons should have endured for hundreds of years, when practical experiment
would in half an hour have convicted the thing, whatever it was, of being a mockery,
a delusion, and a snare.
Many curious beliefs have clustered around the elephant, his sagacity, great
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