General Fantasy

UNICORN...

There are legends of the Unicorn and Noah's ark as to why the Unicorn can't be found today, some relate to the Unicorn being too large to fit in and was left behind, others say that the Unicorn was too shy to enter at all, while others say that the Unicorn did go but for one reason or another it fell or was thrown overboard and drowned. Chinese fables tell of how the Unicorn lived alone on the edge of the world but would appear when the King or Emperor was in trouble or dying,offen as a warning . The Chinese thought as in Europe that the Unicorn was a kind and gentle creature of peace ,with a voice likened to that of a peal of crystal bells. One of the Chinese legends concerning the Unicorn relate to Ghengis Khan the Mongolian rules that invaded & conquered half of China. It was said that the Khan was leading a railing party through the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush when a Unicorn appeared infront of them and bowed three times before Ghengis Khan,terrified the men fled at the sight but the Khan stayed where he was staring at the Unicorn before him. The Khan was said to have felt such a great peace within himself that for over a year he restrained his vast armies from attacking China.

By the middle ages the fame of the Unicorn and especialy its fables healing horn were in great demand,one horn was said to have been found on an island in Frobishers straight in 1577, another was said to be in the keeping of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1641 a French Marquis claimed he saw a horn in the Tower of London with an estimated price of £40,000, worth over £1 million today. Even tiny slivers of Unicorn horn were selling at very high prices as the horn was said to be able to detect poison in anything and even serve to render the poison useless. Powdered Unicorn horn became in great demand and it wasn't long before substitutes were being offered and used. It is easy to see how this legend transfered to other animals and even today the Rhino is now endangered due to the hunting of its horn for the healing & suposed mystical properties contained within it. Experts today think that the claimed Unicorn horns found and possesed in the middle ages were probable that of the Narwale which like the Unicorn has a 4 foot & offen spiral horn on its head.

The final tale of the Unicorn i will give here is that of the rivalry with the Lion for the title the King Of The Beasts, which gave rise to the nursery rhyme following:-

The Lion and the Unicorn

Were fighting for the crown

The lion chased the Unicorn

All around the town

The story finishes when the Unicorn having turned the chase around charges the Lion, misses and ends up burrying its horn deep into a tree. So firmly stuck is the Unicorn that the Lion seizes its chance and leaps onto the back of the Unicorn and kills it. Thus the Lion takes the title and the Unicorn passes into myth and legend never to be seen again.

Around the world there are many tales of Vampires, most cultures have tales in one form or another of blood sucking demons or people. Blood is the life force in all of us so it is hardly suprising that there are so many tales as to the fear of losing it. World wide the Vampire is usualy seen as a demon of the night venturing out from thier lairs to feed once the sun has set.

In south America thier origins could also be in the small bat that bears the Vampire name also. This Bat will feed off most livestock biting its victim and feeding on the wound, it is extremly rare that these bats will bit humans though. In Europe the legends of vampires differ slightly in that the Vampire was seen as taking the form of a normal human as opposed to the form of a demon. The strongest image today of the Vampire is credited to a victorian Author called Bram Stoker. His novel DRACULA was published in1897 and has rarely been out of print since. Dracula was based on the stories of a Rumanian Prince and the European Vampire legends in general. The prince was Vlad the Impaler who was regarded as a ruthless tyrant that offen had his victims sat impaled on sharpened spiked around his castle. After one victorious battle he was suposed to have impaled 10,000 victims around the castle walls. Stoker took these tales and succesfuly incorporated the vampire tales to produce a lasting image of the Archytypal Vampire.

Across Europe the Vampire was described as looking just like anyone else even before Bram Stoker, while as stated world wide they were described as demons. The following description though was the same worldwide in that true Vampires cast no shadow and had no reflection at all. They could turn themselves into snakes,wolves and bats at will but were unable to cross running water. As creatures of the night they feared the sun and had to return to thier lairs (coffins in european tales) before the sun rose, the power of the sun would turn the Vampire to ash in minutes. Vampires lived in a state known as undead, halfway between the world of the living & the dead and as long as they fed on fresh blood were considdered immortal. The European vampire being in human form was credited with great sophistication and charm probably due to thier great age, some were thought to be 100's of years old. Ther were may ways to kill a Vampire around the world the most common being that of beheading or the driving of a wooden steak through the heart. They were also said to fear religious icons such as crosses, and holy water would act like acid on a Vampire burning all that it touched. For reasons that are lost the European Vampires also despised garlic so much that people could protect themselves by wearing a little around thier necks and protect thier homes by rubbing the bulb across window and door frames. European legend has it that a Vampire could only enter a home where it was invited but this isn't so worldwide,the origin of this is probably the work of Bram Stoker's novel.

Being bitten by a Vampire was the accepted way that others would turn into one but this wasn't always the case. Old legends tell of other ways to become a Vampire such as:-

People who commited suicide,Witches,The seventh son of a seventh son,people who tell lies,Children that haven't been baptised,murderers(when they die),people that dont eat garlic,eating meat killed by a wolf, around the world in the past almost any wrong doing would offen be acredited to the making of a future vampire so ways were devised to prevent them from rising again once they had died. The most common of these yet again was beheading the corpse,once this was done garlic was placed in the coffin between the head and the shoulders to prevent it rejoining. Garlic was offen also placed in the mouth of the victim for similar reasons, once this was done the body could be burried face down and thorny roses planted around the grave to hinder any unlikely emergence from the would be Vampire. Other ways to kill a vampire were given as ,shooting them with a silver bullet (as with werewolves) or burning the coffins to prevent them returning before sun up.

Of all the old and modern myths the Vampire is probably the most enduring and world wide one of the most popular caracters on film. from the 1926 film Nosferatu to the more recent Bram Stoker's Dracula Vampires still hold a fasination for many people.

According to an ancient superstition a werewolf was a man who is transformed, or who transforms himself, into a wolf in nature and appearance. The word itself means "man-wolf" and is derived from Old English words: wer, meaning man, and wulf, meaning wolf. The werewolf, sometimes transformed under the influence of a full moon, and roamed about at night, devouring infants or corpses. Stories of such transformations are given in the works of several classical writers and the superstition was common throughout Europe in late medieval times, when many men were accused and convicted of being werewolves. The term lycanthropy refers to the delusion that one has become a wolf. Tales of werewolves have been told since ancient Greece and Rome, and such folklore exists on all continents. In places where wolves are not common, other fierce animals tigers, lions, bears, or hyenas replace them. Like the vampire, the werewolf has become a popular horror theme in motion pictures. Werewolves are believed to turn into vampires after death.

In Persian legend, a giant birdlike monster so old that it has seen the world destroyed three times over, and thus possesses the knowledge of all the ages.

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