Title The Lore of the Unicorn Series --- Author Odell Shepard Cover Art --- Publisher Avenel Books - 1982 First Printing 1930 Category Reference Warnings None Main Characters --- Main Elements Unicorns Website ---

One animal has bridged and eastern and western religion, fantasy and folklore, history and science - the unicorn. Rich with anecdotes and worldly facts, The Lore of the Unicorn is an extensive look into the legend and mystery of this fantastic beast.

Whether they are imagination or fact, unicorns have been a popular subject in the field of literature, and literature going back to the 4 B.C. introduced the first written document on the subject, although unicorns existed or were imagined long before that.

The mythical nature of the beast has brought about diverse descriptions, functions, and accounts. The most glorified and popular image of the unicorn is that of a stunningly beautiful white horse with a single magical horn protruding from it's forehead. But descriptions have varied from the diminutive goat to the rhinoceros. Some even link the unicorn with some semblance of a sea creature.

The unicorn is described as strong, spirited, ferocious, and as a creature of fancy, but also as a beast vulnerable to virgins. One can find accounts of the unicorn in the Bible, cave walls, eastern doctrines, and even in zoology books. Eminent sixteenth-century zoologist Conrad Gesner is known to have written the definitive book on unicorns. In his compendium of previous fact and lore of the unicorn, Gesner is thought to be the first to suggest, based on his scientific findings, that the unicorn actually existed and became extinct in the Biblical flood. He also suggested that unicorns were used to detect poison.

Odell Shepard, in turn, writes to definitive account up to modern times in The Lore of the Unicorn. In a scholarly yet enjoyable manner, he sets out to answer questions such as the origin of the unicorn, how it was related to human nature and ways of human thought, how it got its reputation, how it acted in detecting poison, and many others.

As one can see in the book, unicorns not only inspired poets and scientists but were very influential in the works of artists and craftsmen. Famous works of art such as "The Rape of Proserpine" by Albrecht Durer are included in addition to well-known tapestries and sculptures.

One can see that the legend of the unicorn has at one time linked it with demons and at other times with angels. Some people believe the unicorn is real, while others substantiate it as myth. The Lore of the Unicorn sets down all the information about unicorns and lets ones decide for oneself if unicorns are fact or fiction.

I actually started this book back in March, and took me nearly four months to read, not because it was bad or boring, but it isn't exactly light reading. It is however, one of them most famous reference books on unicorns, I've even seen it referenced by fiction books like Unicorn Mountain by Michael Bishop. And for good reason, while being a scholarly exercise, it is still readable by someone who wants to learn more about the unicorn legend, even if they don't wish to do academic research.

Shepard covers pretty much everything related to the unicorn legend, from their horns purifying poisons, the maiden capture, association with lunar worship, and finally, going through the various ways people might have seen a real animal and have confused it with a unicorn. Keep in mind the word "unicorn", meaning one-horn, does in fact validly apply to the rhinoceros or the narwhal (yes, it is a tooth, not a horn, but some chose to ignore that fact) and the ancients would have called them unicorns, even though we have other names for them now. Anything with a single horn, regardless of the rest of it's body shape, is a true unicorn. Shepard points out that people in the past weren't stupid, but they viewed the world quite differently from us, and their scientific reasoning was equally on a different baseline. And before we laugh at the gullibility of people for buying miraculous cures from shady merchants, keep in mind we continue to do the same today. "Instant weight loss!" "Cures cancer!" I don't doubt some herbal remedies are for real, but there are just as many that do harm, and we trust it since we "read it on the Internet" so it must be true. Things haven't really changed...

Shepard explains that people believe that the horn of an animal concentrates it's "powers", and an animal with a single horn has that power concentrated, hence the interest in unicorns in particular. After all, keep in mind that people in the past didn't consider the unicorn to be a magical or mystical creature, they thought it no different than any other animal, just unusually rare and hard to catch. Any horn was good for curing disease or poison, but the single-horn was simply better at it. And you can't really blame people for believing in it, I mean is it so hard to picture a creature like a horse/ox/antelope/goat with a single horn, as compared to, a giraffe? Who in Europe would believe in a spotted animal with a neck so long it could graze in the treetops? Or a huge grey creature with a nose like a snake? Talk about a fantastical beasts! The unicorn seems perfectly reasonable in comparison.

We will probably never know the true origins of the unicorn legend, in fact it probably doesn't have a single root, whether the legend was born from worship of the moon, or mistaken identity of a live animal, or taking a profile image of an animal and assume it's one horned since you cannot see the other horn, or even a mistranslation in the Bible. The legend of the unicorn is a complex and tangled thing, with great scholars of the past both supporting and denying it's existence.

But wouldn't the world be a more boring place if it weren't for our myths? Sure, we've taken a fierce and monstrously dangerous creature that can kill an elephant with it's horn and turned it into a sparkle pony for little girls to decorate their bedrooms with, but it was those cute, glittery horned horses that started me on my love of all things fantasy and inspired the imaginations of people for millenia.