# To capture a unicorn, the virgin must (possibly TMI) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 3, 2008, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578 "2008-06-03T03:12:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/1 "2008-06-03T03:12:51Z")
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](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=470323) 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](http://www.wickedwinks.com/uni/ul.html) 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? ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/2 "2008-06-03T04:07:26Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] Anywhistle…I had never put this association together before. Has anyone a less, ahem, ooky interpretation? [/QUOTE] From [wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn) > [@](#): > > In one of his notebooks Leonardo da Vinci wrote:The unicorn, through its intemperance and not knowing how to control itself, for the love it bears to fair maidens forgets its ferocity and wildness; and laying aside all fear it will go up to a seated damsel and go to sleep in her lap, and thus the hunters take it. That’s how I remember the tale: they fall asleep _on_, not sleep _with_, maidens. That and a bit from _Bimbos of the Death Sun_, where a SF fan wakes up and realises that \ ***he** \*can’t tame unicorns anymore. This makes my last contribution to the other thread far more ooky than I meant it to be. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/3 "2008-06-03T04:13:31Z")
[QUOTE=maggenpye] From [wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn) That’s how I remember the tale: they fall asleep _on_, not sleep _with_, maidens. That and a bit from _Bimbos of the Death Sun_, where a SF fan wakes up and realises that \ ***he** \*can’t tame unicorns anymore. This makes my last contribution to the other thread far more ooky than I meant it to be. [/QUOTE] I promise I did not intend to start anything ooky in the other thread. I’ve read the wikipedia entry, by the way. It’s just that the alternate and disgusting interpretation is not one that had ever occurred to me before. ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/4 "2008-06-03T04:16:31Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] I promise I did not intend to start anything ooky in the other thread. I’ve read the wikipedia entry, by the way. It’s just that the alternate and disgusting interpretation is not one that had ever occurred to me before. [/QUOTE] Oh yeah, now that there’s horse dicks and breast suckling all over the threads, \*now \*you didn’t mean to start anything! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/5 "2008-06-03T04:24:06Z")
[QUOTE=maggenpye] Oh yeah, now that there’s horse dicks and breast suckling all over the threads, \*now \*you didn’t mean to start anything! 😉 [/QUOTE] Honestly, I didn’t. I’m really hoping for a really good alternate explanation, because that image is NOT helping with my concept of a story of an abused girl finding redemption. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/6 "2008-06-03T04:26:24Z")
[spoiler]I don’t think that actual fucking is going on. I can’t combine fucking with the next sentence: “Then the girl, while sitting quietly…” It reads to me, a lot more as though the virgin is expected to masturbate the unicorn while it’s sucking on her breasts. Then capture the unicorn by grabbing his other horn while it’s in post-orgasmic stupor. See! Not as ooky! [/spoiler] ETA: More seriously, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It may be an authentic description, but it’s far from the only one, and there’s a good deal of contradiction within the various sources. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/7 "2008-06-03T04:49:58Z")
It’s still kind of creepy, even if they don’t actually do it–why is the unicorn sucking on the girl’s breasts? ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/8 "2008-06-03T04:52:57Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t think that actual fucking is going on. I can’t combine fucking with the next sentence: “Then the girl, while sitting quietly…” Would it make sense if it read “Then the girl, while smoking a cigarette…” ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/9 "2008-06-03T04:59:48Z")
**Freudian Slit** , horses lip almost anything that catches their fancy. So, it’s not that outre for me to think of having a horse-based animal exploring something that fascinates it with it’s mouth. From there the theories I can come up with get pretty Freudian: sexual symbolism, repression, and the worship of sexual purity. On preview: **ZenBeam** : it’s more a matter of imagining the gymnastics required for a woman to actually try to arrange to copulate with a horse or pony. Especially if it’s done while the horse/pony is still licking her breasts. She’s not going to be doing anything quietly until she’s had a chance to regain her breath. ---
**Author:** ![CaerieD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@CaerieD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaerieD)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/10 "2008-06-03T05:23:55Z")
The way I had always understood it was that the unicorn was a Christ metaphor (of course) and the virgin is a stand-in for the Virgin Mary. She suckles the unicorn as Mary suckled Christ, and the familiarity is motherly and pure, not sensual. ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/11 "2008-06-03T05:26:15Z")
Hey, re-reading the other thread, it’s a different world. Your planet, your rules mate. You could have onlookers finding the whole thing a bit erotic, but the girl experiencing a wholesome sense of innocence radiating from the silky soft pulsing firmness … etc etc. I must admit, even as a preteen, I always thought there was something … off about the whole image of a virgin girl letting this great beast put it’s horn in her lap. Too many Benny Hill jokes. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/12 "2008-06-03T11:55:31Z")
I’ve read bestiaries and Natural Histories, and must confess that I’ve never read a description quite like the one you cite. Usually the virgin just appears and the unicorn puts its head in her lap, or she bares her breasts at it, and it goes gentle and puts its head in her lap. See T.H. White’s **The Bestiary: or the Book of Beasts** , or Odell Shepherd’s classin **The Unicorm** , or this site here : [http://www.bestiary.ca/beasts/beast140.htm](http://www.bestiary.ca/beasts/beast140.htm) I never read about the unicorn suckling the breasts or “acting familiarly” – whatever that may mean. Not to say that there isn’t anything TMI about this. As Willy Ley said in his essay on The Unicorn (reprinted in **The Unicorn, The Lungfish, and the Dodo** and in **Willy Ley’s Exotic Zoology** ): What is it that is potent, stands tall, and loses its power in the lap of a virgin? But I think you’re taking it too literally. Still, when you’re writing a fresh piece of fantasy fiction, new interpretations are what capture your audiences interest and make them want to keep on reading. Or else really squick them out. Your call. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/13 "2008-06-03T15:03:09Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] But I think you’re taking it too literally. Still, when you’re writing a fresh piece of fantasy fiction, new interpretations are what capture your audiences interest and make them want to keep on reading. Or else really squick them out. Your call. [/QUOTE] Oh, I’ve no intention of mentioning bestiality in the story; it’s just that the notion was squicking ME out. [QUOTE=CaerieD] The way I had always understood it was that the unicorn was a Christ metaphor (of course) and the virgin is a stand-in for the Virgin Mary. She suckles the unicorn as Mary suckled Christ, and the familiarity is motherly and pure, not sensual. [/QUOTE] :smack: Okay, now THAT interpretation for the imagery I can get behind. You have not only freed me of the squicky image, but likely have also saved my wife’s unicorn collection from the dustbin. [stewie griffin] Thank you. When the world is mine, your death shall be quick and painless. [/stewie griffin] [QUOTE=ZenBeam] Would it make sense if it read Spoiler: “Then the girl, while smoking a cigarette…” [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=OtakuLoki] Freudian Slit, horses lip almost anything that catches their fancy. So, it’s not that outre for me to think of having a horse-based animal exploring something that fascinates it with it’s mouth. From there the theories I can come up with get pretty Freudian: sexual symbolism, repression, and the worship of sexual purity. On preview: ZenBeam: it’s more a matter of imagining the gymnastics required for a woman to actually try to arrange to copulate with a horse or pony. Especially if it’s done while the horse/pony is still licking her breasts. She’s not going to be doing anything quietly until she’s had a chance to regain her breath. [/QUOTE] \*\*ZenBeam \*\* and **OtakuLoki** , on the other hand, will be FED ALIVE TO ALLIGATORS!!! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/14 "2008-06-03T15:27:04Z")
I had always assumed with a virgin, and an animal with a single horn on it’s head, putting it head and horn in her lap was pretty obvious what was going on. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/15 "2008-06-03T19:07:54Z")
That’s the thing with unicorns - they’ve always got the horn. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/16 "2008-06-03T19:15:39Z")
Horses lip anything that catches their fancy? Hmm. “No, pony, he’ll LIKE that,” comes to mind. If you showed a horse your breasts, would it just…go at them? [QUOTE=CalMeacham] I’ve read bestiaries and Natural Histories, and must confess that I’ve never read a description quite like the one you cite. Usually the virgin just appears and the unicorn puts its head in her lap, or she bares her breasts at it, and it goes gentle and puts its head in her lap. [/QUOTE] The idea of a horse going to town with a maiden’s boobs seem at odds with it going “gentle”–the OP’s description certainly wasn’t…gentle. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/17 "2008-06-03T19:19:26Z")
[QUOTE=wolfman] I had always assumed with a virgin, and an animal with a single horn on it’s head, putting it head and horn in her lap was pretty obvious what was going on. [/QUOTE] Yeah, as Freudian imagery goes, it’s not real subtle, is it? I mean, sometimes a cigar is just a throbbing turgid rod of manhood, you know? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/18 "2008-06-03T20:41:22Z")
> [@](#): > > The idea of a horse going to town with a maiden’s boobs seem at odds with it going “gentle”–the OP’s description certainly wasn’t…gentle. Agreed – I hadn’t come across anything in the old bestiaries like the OP’s description. ---
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/19 "2008-06-03T20:45:16Z")
Maybe something like this was going on: NSFW: [http://www.worlddreambank.org/U/UNICORGY.HT](http://www.worlddreambank.org/U/UNICORGY.HT) M ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2008, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578/20 "2008-06-03T22:13:13Z")
[QUOTE=OtakuLoki] **ZenBeam** : it’s more a matter of imagining the gymnastics required for a woman to actually try to arrange to copulate with a horse or pony. Especially if it’s done while the horse/pony is still licking her breasts. She’s not going to be doing anything quietly until she’s had a chance to regain her breath. [/QUOTE] Maybe it’s not “still” licking her breasts. Maybe it’s **pre** licking her breasts, wetting them down for some tittyfucking. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-capture-a-unicorn-the-virgin-must-possibly-tmi/451578.md?page=2)