The Mystic Capture of the Unicorn

The legendary unicorn is too fierce to suffer defeat from mere huntsmen and hounds.

When they find him, he runs at a speed hard to match. When they bring him to bay, he fights and prevails.

Only the magic of a maiden can subdue him.

But how does this mystic capture transpire? Does the beast grow docile in the presence of a maiden and lay its head in her lap or upon her breast as the medieval bestiaries assert?

The tapestry in the unicorn cycle that depicted this mystic moment was damaged, and only two fragments remain.

In the fragment with the maiden, we also see a hound lunging for the unicorn’s back, or perhaps for its flank, where blood is visible. The unicorn may be docile, but its capture seems likely to be violent.

My own story, The Hunt of the Unicorn, diverges from the medieval legend at several points, but it does have one supremely peaceful vignette. My unicorn remembers his first moments of life after his birth.

He is ever so weak and wobbly when he tries to stand. But before he makes that effort, he knows contentment and security in the warm presence of his mother.

I imagine unicorns as possessing many of the attributes of horses. One of the equine characteristics I remember reading about is the difference between how humans relate to touch and how horses relate to it.

We humans are very cuddly, by and large. We hug, we pat each other, we hold one another, we stroke the head, and so on.

Horses aren’t cuddly. As herd animals, they take great comfort in the presence of their herd mates. (A lone horse is a horse vulnerable to predators.) They also literally throw their weight around to communicate. The nudge their foals. They hip check or shoulder check one another to assert dominance.

So when my unicorn was born, his mother nuzzled him and nudged him. But it was her quiet presence that he found most comforting.

I discovered a video of a newborn foal and its mother that captured perfectly the interval after my unicorn’s birth.

For more about the Hunt of the Unicorn, see:
The Hunters Enter the Woods
The Unicorn Is Found
The Unicorn Is Attacked
The Unicorn Defends Itself
The Unicorn Is Killed
The Unicorn Lives
Unicorn’s Lullaby

 

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The Unicorn Defends Itself

The huntsmen in the medieval tapestries depicting the unicorn hunt are clearly hunting par force or by coursing. Meaning that they use sighthounds, not only scent hounds, to pursue the prey.

In the fourth tapestry of the unicorn cycle, the dogs and the huntsman have caught up with the unicorn, but to little avail. The beast is fierce and fights off its attackers successfully. Its horn pierces one hound’s breast, likely killing it. Who knows what further wounds the unicorn inflicts before it charges away through the forest?

In order to write my short story, The Hunt of the Unicorn, I needed to learn more about coursing as it was done in medieval times.

Fortunately, there are several books from the time period detailing exactly how the hunt proceeded. And I found a modern-day enthusiast who devotes a website to the topic.

The “Great Hunt” of the Middle Ages was an elaborate affair with distinct and multiple stages.

The Preparation

The day before the hunt, the huntmaster sallies forth to talk with foresters and woodsmen.

From them he learns what game is available and where each beast lay overnight. He hears accounts of what the foresters know regarding the probable size of the animal. The noblemen participating in the hunt want a large, strong adversary.

The Gathering

The whole of the hunting party sets out the next day: noblemen, huntmaster, huntsmen, dog handlers (berners), mews boys, etc.

While the noblemen enjoy an al fresco meal, the huntmaster sends his huntsmen out to the lays he learned of the day before. There each huntsman records the size of the animal’s hoofprint by breaking a small stick and collects the fumes (droppings).

The huntsmen bring their sticks and fumes back to the huntmaster, who evaluates them to determine the potential prey, one that is large and ‘in fat.’

The huntmaster chooses which beast they will hunt, and that focuses their attention. They will not break off from pursuit of that animal to chase another.

Placing the Sighthounds

Once the prey is chosen, three relays of three sighthounds, each relay accompanied by a berner, are placed along the probable route that the pursuit will take.

Then a special tracking dog called a lymer is set to work. (He is a scent hound, not a sighthound.) It is his job to find and move the prey animal. He works on a leash or ‘line’ held by his keeper.

Once the prey has been located and moved to the start of the planned route, the hunt proper begins.

Loose the Raches

Twelve or twenty-four scent hounds called raches are loosed to chase the prey, exhausting it both through the length of its running flight and through the fear induced by the baying of the dogs.

The noblemen follow on horseback, at times wounding the prey animal with their swords or spears. Bows and arrows are not used.

If the raches lose the scent, the lymer is brought forward again to locate and move the prey.

Loose the Sighthounds

As the hunt draws past the first relay of sighthounds, these dogs are released. They are very fast, very strong, and fierce fighters. They sprint to bring the prey animal down.

But, often, the prey is equally fast, equally strong, and equally fierce. It escapes. Or it fights successfully and then escapes.

(This is the moment depicted in the fourth tapestry shown at the beginning of this post.)

So the hunt goes onward in pursuit. And when they pass the next relay of sighthounds, this second relay is loosed.

The End of the Hunt

In the medieval myth about the unicorn, the huntsmen and their hounds cannot succeed. The unicorn is too fierce for them. It is only by the involvement of a maiden that the fabulous beast can be subdued.

But most hunts of hares, deer, or even boar could succeed. If the first relay of sighthounds did not pull the prey down, then the second or third would.

The dogs were not allowed to kill the animal. They were pulled off, and one of the noblemen would slay the beast with his sword, dagger, or spear.

The animal would be skinned and disemboweled, the dogs given their share, and the remainder sent to the castle kitchens to be made into dishes for feasting.

Modern-day Ethics

All of the above likely seems brutal to our modern sensibilities. We can imagine rather vividly what it might be like to be the prey animal suffering a chase to its death.

But the medieval hunters were the culmination of a long history of hunting and coursing—millennia—to provide for the table. Without hunting, there was not enough food for them or their families. And like humans will in every time and place when a job has to be done, they made it serve as entertainment as well.

Many nations in our modern world have outlawed coursing, deeming it cruel and inhumane.

Lure coursing, in which a mechanically operated artificial lure is ‘hunted,’ keeps alive some of the pageantry and tradition of the medieval hunt, and the specially bred skills of the magnificent sighthounds, without putting an innocent prey animal through torture.

For more about the Hunt of the Unicorn, see:
The Hunters Enter the Woods
The Unicorn Is Found
The Unicorn Is Attacked
The Mystic Capture of the Unicorn
The Unicorn Is Killed
The Unicorn Lives
Unicorn’s Lullaby

 

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The Unicorn Is Attacked

The third tapestry in The Hunt of the Unicorn cycle depicts the murderous attack initiated by the royal huntsmen upon the unicorn when they bring him to bay in the forest.

I found it interesting that five of the six spears wielded have the metal crosspiece of a boar spear. That crosspiece is present because wild boar were incredibly dangerous beasts. Even with a spearhead jammed down their throats and lodged there, they were known to slam themselves up the spear with sufficient ferocity that the spearsman might die of their attack. The metal crosspiece impeded such a charge.

Evidently the ferocity of a unicorn was deemed equal to that of a wild boar!

As I wrote my own version of The Hunt of the Unicorn, I found the story told by the tapestries of that name becoming a central element in my narrative.

The unicorn of the tapestries is sought in the woods, located by the royal huntsmen, pursued, and challenged with spears. Mine is also.

But while the characters of the tapestries are archetypal, representing our collective human experience of Maiden, Fabulous Beast, and Nobleman, mine are specific individuals with their own quirks, personalities, and names.

Nor do the events of my story dovetail exactly with those depicted in the tapestries.

Yes, my huntsmen go into the forest to find the unicorn, but their reason for doing so is all their own. And when they find the beast . . . well, let’s just say that a spiritual battle takes place alongside the physical one.

Despite these differences and others, I drew heavily on the tapestries for my world building.

I had taken the hounds in the tapestries to be deerhounds, but those boar spears gave me pause, as did the unicorn’s reputation for fighting prowess. I eventually decided that Irish wolfhounds would be required!

As I read about Irish wolfhounds, I learned that their origins go back to the prehistoric Celts, when the hounds fought alongside their masters as war dogs in battles against their enemies. In later centuries, they did indeed hunt wolves.

They are very large, very strong, and very fierce in a fight. Despite their effectiveness in the hunt (or in battle, during ancient times), their disposition is mild, peaceable, reserved, and easygoing. They get very attached to their owners and any dogs they are raised with, and become morose if separated from them.

The hounds in my story are definitely wolfhounds!

For more about the Hunt of the Unicorn, see:
The Hunters Enter the Woods
The Unicorn Is Found
The Unicorn Defends Itself
The Mystic Capture of the Unicorn
The Unicorn Is Killed
The Unicorn Lives
Unicorn’s Lullaby

 

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The Unicorn Is Found

By 1728, the tapestries depicting the royal hunt of the unicorn were hanging in the Château de Verteuil, a property of the Lord of La Rochefoucauld located along the river Charente.

Two of the tapestries were placed in a hall adjacent to a chapel. The other five adorned a bedroom. The smallest may have served as a bed canopy. The larger pieces would have required a wide stretch of wall to accommodate them.

During the French Revolution, the tapestries were looted and used to cover potatoes. When recovered from a barn many years later, they proved to have sustained damage, although they retained their vibrant colors. One, in fragments, was repurposed to serve as bed curtains.

The second of the seven tapestries depicts the unicorn dipping his horn in a stream of water flowing from a fountain. The horn purifies the water for a variety of animals to drink from it.

In medieval Christian allegory, the lion represents Christ because of the beast’s “three natures.”

When the lion walks in the high mountains, he erases his tracks with his tail, exemplifying the way Jesus’ divinity was in repose during his earthly ministry. When the lion sleeps with his eyes open, he symbolizes Jesus physically dead upon the cross, but spiritually alive. And when the lion roars over his cubs (born dead) to bring them to life, he represents Jesus’ resurrection.

(To medieval scholars, the lion was a beast every bit as fabulous as a unicorn, a griffon, or a pegasus. Their understanding of leonine habits was lacking, to put it mildly!)

The other beasts possess symbolism as well.

The panther is Christ again, the ultimate enemy of the devil, much as the panther is the enemy of the dragon, ultimate serpent. The stag, too, is Christ, who tramples and destroys Satan.

The leopard is valiant and sweet-breathed, but a signifier of bastardy. The rabbit represents the modest, retiring soul who trusts fully in God. The hyena stands for greed, hypocrisy, and the temptations of the devil, sins to be resisted.

Just at the moment when the unicorn dips his horn in the fountain’s waters, the hunters discover him. In the tapestry, they all point. “See! There he is!”

For more about the Hunt of the Unicorn, see:
The Hunters Enter the Woods
The Unicorn Is Attacked
The Unicorn Defends Itself
The Mystic Capture of the Unicorn
The Unicorn Is Killed
The Unicorn Lives
Unicorn’s Lullaby

 

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