"The Lion and the Unicorn
Were fighting for the crown;
The Lion beat the Unicorn
All round the town," &c.
unless it alludes to a contest for dominion over the brute creation, which the "rebellious Unicorn," as Spenser calls it, seems to have waged with the tawny monarch.
Spenser, in his "Faerie Queen," gives the following curious way of catching the Unicorn:—
"Like as a lyon, whose imperiall powre,
A prowd rebellious Unicorn defyes,
T'avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre
Of his fiers foe, him a tree applyes,