One of the Arabian annalists, El Kazwini, has much to say about the magical and curative properties of these cups; and a yet fuller notice of them appears in Lane’s “Arabian Nights,” chap. xx. note 32. It is also stated that most of the Eastern potentates possessed one of these cups. In Hyder Ali’s treasury at Tanjore was found a specimen.
In “Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan,” by the Rev. C. T. Wilson and R. W. Felkin, vol. ii. p. 275, we read:—
“Cups made of rhinoceros horn are supposed to have the peculiar virtue of detecting poison in coffee and sherbet. Often, when drinking for the first time in a strange house, one of these cups is offered to assure the visitor that no foul play is contemplated. These are considered most valuable presents and a mark of lasting friendship and esteem.” [Back]
In the “Display of Heraldry” published by John Guillim in the year 1679 we read—“It hath been much questioned amongst naturalists, which it is that is properly called the Unicorn; and some have made doubt whether there be any such Beast as this or no. But the great esteem of his horn (in many places to be seen) may take away that needless scruple.” Having thus satisfactorily established the existence of such a creature he naturally feels at full liberty to group around the central fact divers details, as, for instance, that “the wild Beasts of the wilderness use not to drink of the Pools, for fear of venomous Serpents there breeding, before the Unicorn hath stirred it with its horn.”
It seems to have been a debateable point whether the unicorn had ever been taken alive, but Guillim decisively negatives the idea, and naturally avails himself of it for the greater glorification of the creature and of its service in his beloved science of heraldry. He lays down the broad fact that the unicorn is never taken alive, and here surely we can thoroughly go with him; but “the reason being demanded, it is answered that the greatness of his mind is such that he chuseth rather to die, wherein the unicorn and the valiant-minded soldier are alike, which both contemn death, and rather than they will be compelled to undergo any base servitude and bondage they will lose their lives.”
Philip de Thaun, on the other hand, not only admits the idea that the unicorn may be captured alive, but gives the full receipt for doing so. It would appear that, like Una’s lion, the animal is of a particularly impressionable nature, and is always prepared to do homage to maiden beauty and innocence, and this amiable trait in its character is basely taken advantage of. “When a man intends to hunt and take and ensnare it he goes to the forest where is its repair, and there places a virgin. Then it comes to the virgin, falls asleep on her lap, and so comes to its death. The man arrives immediately and kills it in its sleep, or takes it alive and does as he will with it.” The young ladies of that very indefinite date must have possessed considerably more courage and nerve than some of their sisters of the present day, who show symptoms of hysteria if they find themselves in the same room with a spider—a considerably less severe test than an interview in the dark shades of the forest with an amorous unicorn. One cannot, however, help feeling that the victim of misplaced confidence comes out of the transaction most creditably, and that both man and maiden must have felt what schoolboys call “sneaks.”
The unicorn, alive or dead, seems to have eluded observation in a wonderful way, and the men of science were left to extract their facts from the slightest hints, in the same way that distinguished anatomists and geologists of these later days are enabled to build up an entire animal from one or two isolated bones. The process, however, does not seem, in the case of the earlier men, to have been a very successful one, and there is consequently a great clashing amongst the authorities, and one of the mediæval writers, feeling the difficulty of drawing any very definite result from the chaos before him, adopts the plan, in which we humbly follow him, of simply putting it all down just as it comes to hand, and leaving his readers to make the best they can of it. He writes as follows:—
“Pliny affirmeth it is a fierce and terrible creature, Vartomannus a tame animal: those which Garcias ab Horto described about the Cape of Good Hope were beheld with heads like horses, those which Vartomannus beheld he described with the head of a Deere: Pliny, Ælian, Solinus, and Paulus Venetus affirm the feet of the Unicorn are undivided and like the Elephant’s, but those two which Vartomannus beheld at Mecha were, as he described, footed like a Goate. As Ælian describeth it, it is in the bignesse of an Horse, that which Thevet speaketh of was not so big as an Heifer, but Paulus Venetus affirmeth that they are but little lesse than Elephants.”
On turning to the records of a distinguished French Society established in 1633 we come across many strange items. These records are entitled “A general collection of the Discourses of the Virtuosi of France, upon questions of all sorts of philosophy and other natural knowledge, made in the Assembly of the Beaux Esprits at Paris by the most ingenious persons of that nation.” Their meetings were termed conferences, and there are notes of two hundred and forty of these. The subjects discussed covered a very wide field, the following being some few amongst them—Of the end of all things, of perpetual motion, of the echo, of how long a man may continue without eating, whether is to be preferred a great stature or a small, of the loadstone, of the origin of mountains, and who are the most happy in this world, wise men or fools. Some of these subjects are now definitely settled, while others are as open to discussion as ever, as, for example, the questions whether it be expedient for women to be learned, and whether it be better to bury or to burn the bodies of the dead. In this great accumulation of the notions of the seventeenth century we find, amongst other items that more especially concern our present purpose, discussions on genii, on the phœnix, and on the unicorn.
In the early days of a similar institution, our own Royal Society—a body which is now so staid, and which focuses all the most important scientific results of the day to itself—many points were discussed in perfect good faith that are now consigned to oblivion—the trees that grow diamonds, the rivers that run precious gems, and the seeds that fell from heaven being amongst these; while at another meeting we find the Duke of Buckingham presenting the Society with a piece of the horn of the unicorn.