The Lore of the Unicorn by Odell Shepard

[Melanti]

Our original tale/collection read this week will be The Lore of the Unicorn by Odell Shepard.

This doesn't sound like the type of book to need a separate spoiler thread, but if anyone wants one, speak up!

[Melanti]

This one is out of copyright.
For those of us with e-readers, here's a few links:

HTML version: http://www.sacred-texts.com/etc/lou/i...

This site has PDFs, Epubs and Kindle versions. I downloaded a copy of the Epub and it seems to be properly formatted with a table of contents, etc.
http://www.globalgreyebooks.com/Pages...

[Mary]

Just read through it. My, it's a lot of "natural" history.

[Monica]

Thanks for this link, Melanti. Just downloaded it to Kindle.

[Margaret]

Thanks! It's now on my kindle. Will be April or after before I read it, but I'm looking forward to it.

[Mary]

There's just something about a writer that admires the unicorn's graceful ankle bone.

[Christine]

It actually shows how long this whole ivory desire has been going on doesn't it?

[Melanti]

I'm finding quite a bit of amusing tidbits in this...

For instance, when she's talking about what Pliney did and didn't include in his account of the unicorn, she states: "We may be sure that Pliny had read stories of the horn's prophylactic powers because Pliny read everything ..."

Ha! Not "he quoted other material from the same book" or "Pliney mentioned xxxx as his source for another topic and thus we can assume he must used xxxx for his source on unicorns as well." Nope, nothing like that. We know Pliney knew these tales because Pliney read everything!

[Melanti]

Huh... "Ethiopia had been confused with India even by Virgil"

I never knew this. This seems like an odd thing to confuse, considering they're not even on the same continents!

You'd think that even a rudimentary map would prevent this confusion!

[Mary]

Have you ever seen the maps of the era?

[Melanti]

Well, yes... They're pretty terrible by modern standards. But still.

You make your way via Egypt, to the Red sea - passing Ethiopia - then sail across the larger Arabian Sea to get to India.

There's weeks of travel by Roman standards that separate Ethiopia and India... Ethiopia is probably the mid-point of their trip. They're past it even before they leave the Red sea.

Actually - here's an old Roman map from about 50 or 60 yrs after Virgil.
"Ethiopia" is a wide swath of land from about 3 o'clock down to about 5. India is way up there at 12. They're halfway on the other side of the world by old Roman maps.

[Mary]

Must have thought the map was wrong. 0:)

[Melanti]

lol. It can't be wrong! The Roman Empire is at the center of the world, and you KNOW that's true, so how dare you suggest the map is inaccurate!

[Margaret]

Oh my, that map.

Found an article on my Twitter feed about a newly discovered prehistoric unicorn, that looks a lot like a rhino: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-b...

"With a new discovery, paleontologists have found evidence that a Siberian “unicorn” likely walked the earth at the same time as humans."

This is interesting, given that some of Odell's research into ancient naturalist descriptions of the unicorn describe it as very similar to rhinos.

[Melanti]

Oh, neat! And that would partially explain why some people insisted it was a different animal.

But still, 30,000 years ago? That's a really long time for a myth to stick around with that kind of detail.

[Mary]

Perhaps they found the bones. And Granpa was ready to assure them that they were around when he was young.

[Jalilah]

Funny, I am reading The Wandering Unicorn and the leading character Melusine mentions Odell Shepard and her book The Lore of the Unicorn!

[Margaret]

Jalilah wrote: "Funny, I am reading The Wandering Unicorn and the leading character Melusine mentions Odell Shepard and her book The Lore of the Unicorn!"

This morning I finished the chapter about 'the hunt,' and it made me think that the short story I posted in the Unicorns thread was inspired after reading that chapter.

Mary wrote: "Perhaps they found the bones. And Granpa was ready to assure them that they were around when he was young."

I like that idea!

[Margaret]

Chapter 6: "My review of the modern classics of unicorn lore must be as brief as possible."

Modern classics meaning "mid-sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries."

Um, interesting use of modern!

And interesting use of 'brief' as well. I swear, I don't want to hear anymore about the medicinal uses of the unicorn horn. I get it; people had weird ideas back then!

[Mary]

Hey, it's not ancient, and it's not medieval. "Modern" is the only one left.

[Margaret]

Mary wrote: "Hey, it's not ancient, and it's not medieval. "Modern" is the only one left."

:)

[Margaret]

I think my favorite part of his discussion of unicorns came at the end--about how fishermen were selling narwhal tusks as early as the twelfth century as unicorn horns to the wealthy, ignorant elite. While I do not approve of killing animals for profit, I still like the idea of some poor fisherman finding a narwhal tusk and making his fortune by selling it to someone foolish.

It also made me think about that story about the fisherman making wishes to the fish, and how his wife kept having him wish for a bigger and bigger house, and then to be the pope, then god, etc. Maybe that fish was a narhwal and kept giving the fisherman tusks to sell! Perhaps I can find a short story in that. :)