Template:Featurt airticle/Januar 2018

The gentle an pensefu maiden haes the pouer tae tame the unicorn, fresco, probably bi Domenico Zampieri, c. 1602 (Palazzo Farnese, Roum)

The unicorn is a leegendar ainimal that haes been descrived syne antiquity as a beast wi a lairge, pyntit, spiralin horn projectin frae its foreheid. The unicorn wis depictit in auncient seals o the Indus Valley Ceevilisation an wis mentioned bi the auncient Greeks in accoonts o naitural history bi various writers, includin Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, an Aelian. The Bible an aa descrives an ainimal, the re'em, that some versions translate as unicorn.

In European fowklair, the unicorn is eften depictit as a white horse-lik or gait-lik ainimal wi a long horn an cloven hooves (whiles a gait's beard). In the Middle Ages an Renaissance, it wis commonly descrived as an extremely wild widland craitur, a seembol o purity an grace, that coud anly be capturt by a virgin. In the encyclopaedias its horn wis said tae hae the pouer tae render pushioned watter potable an tae heal sickness. In medieval an Renaissance times, the tusk o the narwhal wis whiles sauld as unicorn horn. (Full airticle...)