Unicorn
A horse-like beast with a single horn on its forehead, described by Greek and Roman writers as an untameable animal of India, made a figure of Christ and purity in the Middle Ages, and the national animal of Scotland’s royal arms.
Meaning
The unicorn is a one-horned beast first described, John Vinycomb wrote in 1906, by the Greek writer Ctesias around 400 BC, who placed it in India. Pliny’s “monoceros” has a horse’s body, a stag’s head, an elephant’s feet, a boar’s tail and a single black horn two cubits long, and “cannot be taken alive”. The heraldic unicorn that Vinycomb describes, and our drawing follows, has a horse’s head and body, a lion’s tail, a stag’s legs and cloven hoofs, and a twisted horn; the beard follows the early drawings that, in Beckles Wilson’s words quoted by A. C. Fox-Davies, gave the unicorn “many of the attributes of the deer and goat kind”. Two silver unicorns supported the royal arms of Scotland, and since James VI of Scotland became James I of England one has supported the royal arms beside the English lion.
Origin and history
The ancient writers did not agree on the details. Pliny gives the monoceros a boar’s tail; the Aberdeen Bestiary, made in England about 1200, gives it a deer’s tail, a horse’s body and a “horrible bellow”, and a horn four feet long “so sharp that whatever it strikes is easily pierced”. Both say it could be killed but never caught.
The Middle Ages found a way. Vinycomb gives the legend: the unicorn could be taken only by leaving a young virgin where it came; it would lie down beside her with its head in her lap and fall asleep, and the hunters waiting nearby would kill it. Christian writers read the unicorn as a figure of Christ and of purity, and its horn was believed to detect and defeat poison. Vinycomb adds that every “unicorn’s horn” examined turned out to be a narwhal’s tooth, and Fox-Davies agrees that the horns in European collections belong to the narwhal.
The unicorn of Scotland
James III of Scotland put the unicorn on his gold coins, which were called unicorns, and James V first used two unicorns as supporters of the royal arms, Vinycomb writes. When James VI of Scotland became James I of England, the unicorn came with him as one supporter of the royal arms beside the English lion, the place it held when Vinycomb wrote. The nursery rhyme of “the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown” is, Vinycomb says, about the old enmity between England and Scotland.
Is the unicorn in the Bible?
Yes, in the old English translations. Fox-Davies quotes Beckles Wilson: the translators of the Bible rendered the Hebrew word re’em as “unicorn”, though it “probably meant a rhinoceros”, and so gave the legend scripture’s seal.
Apothecaries and goldsmiths
Because its horn was thought to be proof against poison, Vinycomb writes, the unicorn became a supporter of the arms of the Apothecaries and a signboard for chemists, and the high price of unicorn horn led the goldsmiths of London to take the unicorn as their sign.
Read next
- Next in Mythical creatures of Greece and EuropeManticoreA man-eating beast of ancient report with a lion’s body, a man’s face with three rows of teeth, and a tail with a scorpion’s sting; in heraldry the mantiger.
- In HeraldryUnicorn in heraldryIn heraldry, a horse-like beast with a long twisted horn, a beard, a lion’s tail and cloven hooves. Two unicorns supported the royal arms of Scotland; since 1603 a unicorn faces the English lion on the royal arms. It is Scotland’s national animal.
See also
Minotaur, Centaur, Chimera, Hydra, Harpy, Siren.
Sources
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8.31 (tr. Bostock and Riley), Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley (1855), book VIII, chapter 31, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Book VIII, chapter 31
- Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 15r (University of Aberdeen), Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24, England, c. 1200), folio 15r, “Monoceros”, transcription and translation, University of Aberdeen, Of the monoceros
- A Complete Guide to Heraldry (A. C. Fox-Davies, 1909), Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, A Complete Guide to Heraldry (London: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1909), Project Gutenberg, chapter XIII, The Unicorn, pp. 219–221, quoting Beckles Wilson
- Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art (John Vinycomb, 1906), John Vinycomb, Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art, with Special Reference to Their Use in British Heraldry (London: Chapman and Hall, 1906), Project Gutenberg, The Unicorn, pp. 127–136
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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