Creature Feature: The Unicorn

by Ken Lymer

The symbol of the unicorn has many guises that have inspired writers and artists since the early Middle Ages. Its name derives from the Latin word unicornis, ‘one horn’, and in early medieval texts it was referred to as a unicorne or vnykorn. Traditionally, the medieval unicorn is goat, ass or small horse with a horn on its forehead, but it was transformed in heraldic iconography into a fierce white steed with a spiral horn, goat’s beard, cloven hooves and lion's tail.


The unicorn came to the fore in medieval times through the popularity of bestiaries: collections of moralistic tales illustrated with strange and fabulous creatures. Though the medieval unicorn was goat-sized, it was a fierce, strong and swift creature, which no hunter could capture. A maiden was used as a lure in the hunt for a unicorn. The unicorn would come to the girl and gently place its head in her lap. Sadly, hunters would then capture it or kill it. This theme is exemplified by the famous Dutch tapestries known as the Hunt of the Unicorn dating circa 1500, which now reside in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Thus, the medieval unicorn became associated with the idea of purity and it was also a popular theme to pair the unicorn with the image of a woman serving as an allegory for qualities of chastity or innocence.

The Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestry

Another variation on this theme is found in a series of six tapestries known as the Lady and the Unicorn, dating circa 1500, which now reside in Paris. Five of the tapestries are devoted to the five senses of touch, hearing, smell, sight and taste and involve variations of a scene featuring a noble lady with a unicorn to her left and a lion on her right. The sixth tapestry displays the enigmatic words À mon seul désir, ‘to my only desire’, perhaps referring to love or devotion.

The Lady and the Unicorn - Desire

It is important to note that not all unicorns were white. In a famous scene of a hunt for a unicorn from the Rochester Bestiary (circa 1230), the beast is pale brown. Meanwhile, a fragment of a tapestry from Alsace, Germany dating circa 1500 features a beautiful dun coloured unicorn with white spots, which my illustration for this article is based upon.

Since medieval times, the unicorn horn was believed to be a protection against poisons as well as being a cure for a variety of ailments. In Germany, discoveries of fossilised bones were believed to be the remains of unicorns and these were ground up to make such medicines. In 1686 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz visited the Einhornhöhle, ‘Unicorn Cave’, in western Germany which was one of the sources of these bones. A few years later he drew an illustration of a unicorn’s skeleton for his book Protagaea using skull of a woolly rhinoceros and the teeth and bones of mammoth that were found in Einhornhöhle. A narwhal horn was attached to the skull to complete this scientific forgery of the unicornu fossili, fossil unicorn.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Protagaea Unicorn

The unicorn has also been a heraldic symbol in Scotland since the 12th century, when William I used it as an early form of the Scottish coat of arms. Moreover, during the reign of King James III (1466–1488), gold coins known as ‘Unicorns’ were introduced that featured representations of this heraldic beast.

Scottish Unicorn Coin

During the accession of James I in 1603, England and Scotland were united, and the iconic Royal Coat of Arms of Great Britain was devised that featured the lion representing England and the unicorn as Scotland. Furthermore, the ongoing rivalry between these two countries became satirised in the famous nursery rhyme of The Lion and the Unicorn:

The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown
The lion beat the unicorn
All around the town.

Some gave them white bread,
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum cake
And drummed them out of town.

Lewis Carroll repeats this rhyme in Through the Looking-Glass (1871) and transposes the characters of the lion and unicorn into wonderland. Alice stumbles upon them as they foolishly fight for the crown belonging to the White King. Alice is then handed a plum cake that the lion and unicorn also squabble over. Additionally, Neil Gaiman also alludes to this rhyme in his graphic novel Stardust (1997), which was illustrated by Charles Vess. Gaiman stages a scene beautifully painted by Vess where the protagonists of the novel, Tristran Thorn and Yvaine, witness a lion and a unicorn fighting over a crown in an enchanted forest.

Perhaps, the most celebrated children’s novel about a unicorn is Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse published 1946, which won a Carnegie Medal in the same year. Set in 1842, it features the orphaned teenager, Maria Merryweather, who is sent to live at Moonacre, the manor house of her cousin in the West Country. The novel is full of magical mystery as it is eventually revealed that the ‘little white horse’ is in fact a unicorn. J. K. Rowling has stated this is one of her favourite books and it directly influenced the Harry Potter series.

The Little White Horse

Another notable children’s fantasy novel is Alan Garner’s Elidor (1965). Four children from Manchester become embroiled in the struggle to save the realm of Elidor from the impending darkness. They gather four magical treasures in this task, but they also need a song sung by a powerful unicorn named Findhorn. The children seek out Findhorn and try to enlist his voice to save Elidor.

The director Ridley Scott has also symbolically alluded to unicorns in his films. In Legend there is the special effects laden scene of a unicorn’s horn being cut off by the servants of darkness. Meanwhile, Deckard (Harrison Ford) at the end of Blade Runner finds an origami unicorn left outside his apartment, and in the director’s cut of the film a new enigmatic scene was inserted where Deckard dreams of a unicorn.

Moreover, unicorns have also inspired musicians and songs. The Unicorn was a folk song made famous by the Canadian folk group, The Irish Rovers, in the late 1960s. It tells the tragic story of why unicorns do not exist any longer: they missed Noah’s ark because they were prancing around playing silly games. In more recent times, the Dartmoor based ensemble, The Daughters of Elvin, often perform medieval music with a male dancer dressed in a unicorn mask designed by the famous fairy artist Wendy Froud.

Wendy Froud's Unicorn on CD Cover

All in all, the unicorn has taken on many guises over the centuries which have embodied a variety of different ideas and meanings. Moreover, these different facades still have the power to inspire our endeavours in creating stories, songs, illustrations and movies.

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Ken Lymer is an archaeologist and folklore enthusiast with aspirations of becoming a children’s book illustrator and writer. He has designed and illustrated teachers' packs for schools (History Key Stages 1 to 3) ranging on topics from Celtic cauldrons and Roman bath-houses to Benedictine monasteries and the dissolution of Abbeys during late Tudor times. These also feature entertaining games designed by Ken including Dragons & Ladders and Tudor trump cards.

Creature Feature the First: The Griffin

Ken Lymer

In our first instalment of a new Words & Pictures feature on creatures of myths and legend, we focus upon the griffin.

The griffin is a fabulous creature of myth with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. It has been drawn upon in stories and tales by writers and artists since ancient times and remains a source of inspiration for today’s generation of talents.



Over the centuries there have been many different spellings for the word ‘griffin’ and the most familiar variations include gryphon, gryphin, gryffon, griffon, griffen, etc. The ancient Greeks originally called them gryps, but they were also known as gryphoi from which our modern word ultimately derives.

The earliest images of the griffin appeared in the ancient Middle East at least over 4000 years ago and their iconic forms decorated many types of objects recovered from archaeological sites in Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean during the 2nd millennium BC. There was considerable artistic variation in the griffin form as, for example, Sumerian images depicted a fierce monster with four birds' legs, while Minoan ones from Crete featured a gentle creature reclining on lions' legs with a falcon’s head plumed in long feathers.

Aristeas relates an account of his voyage to the far north where he encountered one-eyed men called Arimaspians, who stole the gold guarded by griffins.

One of the earliest recorded tales about griffins derives from the writings of the famous ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who lived around 5th century BC. Even more fascinating is the fact that Herodotus utilises the writing device of ‘a story within a story’ as he draws upon the folkloric imagery of a forgotten poem by Aristeas. Aristeas relates an account of his voyage to the far north where he encountered one-eyed men called Arimaspians, who stole the gold guarded by griffins. Aristeas is a mysterious, if not mythical figure, in ancient Greek literature and scholars of today still debate among themselves the nature of Aristeas’s poem: was it a work of fiction or truly based on a folktale collected by the author during his travels to the edge of the world?

...within a mountain range in India dwelled a race of four-footed birds that were large as wolves.

Around the same time, the Greek physician Ktesias (late 5th century BC) shifted the legend of the griffins from the north to the south. He claimed that within a mountain range in India dwelled a race of four-footed birds that were large as wolves. These griffins had the legs and claws of a lion but were covered in black feathers except on the breast where these were coloured red.

the griffin represented notions about foreign lands which could be considered the equivalent of ‘here be monsters’

These evocative accounts of guardian griffins were drawn upon time and time again by subsequent Greek and Roman writers. Moreover, the depiction of griffins and Arimaspians became a stock theme in Greek vessel designs known as grypomachy – the battle between griffins (gryps) and barbarian warriors. What fascinated both classical authors and artists is that these fabulous beasts and strange Arimaspians inhabited an exotic geographical setting located at the boundaries of the known ancient world. Thus, the griffin represented notions about foreign lands which could be considered the equivalent of ‘here be monsters’ dotting the edges of old European maps.

By medieval times in Europe, the griffin becomes an allegorical symbol representing the dualities and divisions between good and evil. As the guardian of treasure, the griffin may have stood for knowledge and wisdom, but it was a monster that could bring harm with its claws and, thus, represented injury and cruelty.

a griffin on a coat of arms signifies the bearer was a strong, pugnacious man. 

The griffin also became entangled within the symbolic art of medieval heraldry that recognised its qualities of being a regal and highly emblematic creature. Since the griffin combined the features of noble beasts, the eagle and the lion, it became an iconic figure featured in the coat of arms of many noble families and institutions. Moreover, in the late 14th century, John de Bado Aureo wrote in his famous Treatise on Heraldry (Tractatus de Armis) that a griffin on a coat of arms signifies the bearer was a strong, pugnacious man. This individual also possessed the character and qualities of the eagle and the lion. Moreover, artistically speaking, the griffin becomes a standardised emblem fixed in a fierce pose, while standing on its two hind legs with an elongated tail as it sticks out its tongue from an open beak.

Additionally, fantastic animals were constantly employed as eloquent metaphors in the plays of Shakespeare, and the griffin was no exception. In Act II, Scene I of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Demetrius tells the love stricken Helena that he will run away and abandon her in the forest. She long-windedly replies:

“The wildest hath not such a heart as you. Run when you will, the story shall be chang’d; Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase; The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind Makes speed to catch the tiger, – bootless speed, When cowardice pursues and valour flies.” 

 Moving forward a couple of centuries, a different griffin is presented by Lewis Caroll in Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. In one scene the Queen of Hearts impolitely introduces Alice to a griffin sleeping in the sun. In a humorous reference to its dualistic nature Caroll writes,

“ “What fun!” said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice”.

John Tenniel also created delightful illustrations of the witty griffin and Alice for the original publication in 1865.

Meanwhile, the Brothers Grimm offer a traditional fairytale called The Griffin where the young Hans strives to win the hand of a king’s daughter by attempting to fulfil numerous impossible tasks. The ultimate errand that he must perform, however, is fetching for the king the tail feather of a griffin!

Griffins are still drawn upon in the literary works of the 20th century up to the present day. They appear in the fantasy worlds of C. S. Lewis, Andre Norton and Diana Wynne Jones, while Neil Gaiman has a courageous griffin guarding the gates to the realm of dreams in his Sandman graphic novels. And don’t forget Maurice Sendak in his renowned picture book, Where the Wild Things Are, depicts a rather large, wingless griffin that plays with the boy Max.

All in all, from the edges of the known world to metaphor and flights of fantasy, the griffin offers creative inspiration to writers and artists who dare to pursue its golden treasury of myth and legend.

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Ken Lymer is an archaeologist and folklore enthusiast with aspirations of becoming a children’s book illustrator and writer. He has designed and illustrated teachers' packs for schools (History Key Stages 1 to 3) ranging on topics from Celtic cauldrons and Roman bath-houses to Benedictine monasteries and the dissolution of Abbeys during late Tudor times. These also feature entertaining games designed by Ken including Dragons & Ladders and Tudor trump cards.

Mummers, Old Horses and the Treasure Trove of Folklore

Ken Lymer

As winter descends upon us, it is that time of year with deep connections to folkloric traditions. 





The word ‘folk lore’ was originally coined in 1846 by the antiquary William John Thoms. During his time the ‘folk’ were considered to be illiterate peasants and their stories and customs were looked down upon as quaint relics of the past. By the late 19th century, however, the study of folklore became a serious field of scholarship and academics today consider it to be an important source of information about people’s lives. Moreover, folkloric insights can provide a valuable asset to writers looking to enrich the backdrop of their stories.

a local legend or folk tale can provide the writer with an intimate narrative of past events

Writers have also drawn upon folklore over the centuries through the common literary device of ‘a tale within a tale’. One example, in tune with the winter season, is found in Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders (1887) which relates a tale of two brothers who haunted King’s Hintock Court. They were exorcised by a priest but returned to the Court at the pace of a rooster every New Year’s Day – thus accounting for the local saying, “On new-year’s tide, a cock’s stride”. Therefore, a local legend or folk tale can provide the writer with an intimate narrative of past events presented in conversational mode. The narrator could retell the tale in a detached manner or it can be used to reveal a dark secret about a character. This use of folklore also creates different voices within the text, while additionally offering alternative points of view. 

Folklore can be used to accentuate important social issues of the day.

Folk tales and fairy lore present situations that confound and contradict the established order. This is exemplified by the ghost story, such as Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1849), where the belief in spirits is inevitably at odds with the rationality of a protagonist. This famous tale, however, also demonstrates folklore can be used to accentuate important social issues of the day.

Moreover, the use of legends and fairy tales provide exciting frontiers in writing which connect to the mysterious and fantastic. In his later article entitled Frauds on the Fairies (1853), Dickens additionally advocated fairy tales were vital to the utilitarian age of the 19th century which risked losing touch with the realms of imagination. 

by the 17th century the practise of mumming became associated with carousing in alehouses at Christmas. 

Yuletide is associated with the famous tradition of mummers’ plays. They are part and parcel of the folkloric experience of live performance entailing a different form of storytelling. In Britain, mummers are a small troupe of players who perform comical plays in the street, at people’s houses or in the pub. The term ‘mummer’ itself comes from medieval times and by the 17th century the practise of mumming became associated with carousing in alehouses at Christmas. A repertoire of written mummers’ plays emerged during the 18th century which followed standardised plots. Their heyday was the late 19th century up to the World War I as they were performed across the country from Cornwall to the Shetlands. 

it ( the story) was dynamically adapted to the circumstances of live performance

Mumming was a way for actors to raise money for themselves during Yule. Each village had its own troupe that performed a humorous variation of the mock battle between a hero (Saint George) and a scoundrel (Turkish Knight or Slasher). The slain hero was then brought back to life by a quack doctor. Other minor characters may also appear including Little Johnny Jack and his family on the back, Father Christmas, Beelzebub and Devil Doubt. There was no fixed structure to the story as it was dynamically adapted to the circumstances of live performance. These plays lacked any inclination to produce an authentic historical setting, as this was street theatre in its rawest form. 

©Ken Lymer

Another Yuletide performance features the Hooden Horse (Kent) or ‘Owd ‘Oss (Derbyshire, Yorkshire) and this was popular among particular counties during the 19th century up to the early 20th century. It entails a group of players interacting with a prop horse head which was made of a block of wood placed on a stick. It had a clacking jaw operated by someone stooping under a cloth. The troupe would sing a song about a dying Old Horse and provide comic scenes by trying to whip the hooden horse or mount the operator. 

In the 1720s it was recorded in the Isle of Man that May Day celebrations did not only involve the Queen of the May but also the Queen of Winter. The Queen of May was selected from the daughters of wealthy farmers, while the Queen of Winter was a man dressed in woman’s clothing. A retinue accompanied both Queens and these two opposing fractions engaged in a mock battle. A drag Queen of Winter provides a refreshingly different scenario to Santa and his sleigh. 

Folk sayings provide gems of creative inspiration.

Folk sayings also provide gems of creative inspiration. For instance, the old English word for pluck is ‘plot’ and is associated with adages about snow. In north Lincolnshire it was said that Th’ ohd woman is shakkin’ her feather poäke (her sack of feathers). Meanwhile, in Alnwick, Northumberland, it was sung, The folk in the eas’ is plotin their geese, An’ sendin their feathers ti huz. 

Sources of folklore are easy to find. Visit a library and pour over books in the local studies section. Trawl the web for different scholarly sites which provide public access to collections, such as the Folk Play archive of mummers’ plays. One could also join a society that offers public lectures and newsletters packed full of information like the Folklore Society of London, which was founded in 1878. Among its past members were the eminent fairy tale scholars Andrew Lang and Katherine Briggs, whilst today the author of the Discworld series, Terry Pratchett, is an honorary member. You do not have to be an academic to join, as anyone with a passion for folklore can become a member of this and other venerable societies. 

Folklore taps into traditions important to our creative expressions which can provide new meanings to the present, while harking back to the past. So, go out and discover the treasure trove of folklore and set your imagination on fire this winter season!  

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Ken Lymer is an archaeologist and folklore enthusiast with aspirations of becoming a children’s book illustrator and writer. He has designed and illustrated teacher’s packs for schools (History Key Stages 1 to 3) ranging on topics from Celtic cauldrons and Roman bath-houses to Benedictine monasteries and the dissolution of Abbeys during late Tudor times. These also feature entertaining games designed by Ken including Dragons & Ladders and Tudor trump cards.