There is a bit of sexual grossness later in this post. I’ll put it in a spoiler, it, but be warned. If you really, really like unicorns, you may wish to skip this post.
Earlier today I opened this thread about a short story of mine that’s in the planning stages, in which a young girl meets a unicorn. Over dinner my wife happened to ask me about unicorn symbolism, so I rattled off the basics: avatar of Christ, Scottish coat of arms, the wing thing is very recent, sometimes they resemble goats or deer in earlier conceptions.
All of this was stuff I’ve known for so long I hardly think about it. One tidbit I clearly had never thought about, but my wife noticed. She stopped me in mid-sentence when I said (not nearly so eloquently as below)
“There is an animal called dajja, extremely gentle, which the hunters are unable to capture because of its great strength. It has in the middle of its brow a single horn. But observe the ruse by which the huntsmen take it. They lead forth a young virgin, pure and chaste, to whom, when the animal sees her, he approaches, throwing himself upon her. Then the girl offers him her breasts, and the animal begins to suck the breasts of the maiden and to conduct himself familiarly with her. Then the girl, while sitting quietly, reaches forth her hand and grasps the horn on the animal’s brow, and at this point the huntsmen come up and take the beast and go away with him to the king. Likewise the Lord Christ has raised up for us a horn of salvation in the midst of Jerusalem, in the house of God, by the intercession of the Mother of God, a virgin pure, chaste, full of mercy, immaculate, inviolate.”
“Wait,” my wife said. “What the fuckety fuck does ‘conduct itself familarly’ mean? Are you saying the girl has to fuck the fucking unicorn? Fuck!”
I blinked. “Incredibly,” I said,“I’ve never actually thought that one through. I can’t believe it means that, though. But now that youmention it, the description is, um, suggestive of crimes against nature.”
“Stop showing off and tell me what it means!” she demanded. "Because that is gross gross gross gross gross and if it’s true I can never watch ‘The Last Unicorn Again.’
“You should read the book anyway,” I said.
“You say that about everything,” she said.
Here’s a link to the site from which the passage in the spoiler box came. There’s many other soruces so.
Anywhistle…I had never put this association together before. Has anyone a less, ahem, ooky interpretation?
