Mythical
beasts
14 January 2008
I don't suppose many people knew what a basilisk was - before it played such an important role in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I admit I wasn't sure myself.
I've looked into the question and, it turns out, the basilisk is a giant snake, born of the unusual union between a chicken and a toad in an egg laid on the feast of Saint-Sylvestre - New Year's Eve. Its breath and stare are deadly. Of all animals, only the weasel - I'm not sure how or why - can be certain of overcoming it.
Snake-like, but not a snake at all, the salamander is supposed, by legend, to take only one breath each day. Like the basilisk, its exhalation is fatal to others. It can extinguish fires simply by its presence. Paradoxically, renaissance alchemists considered it a source of 'secret fire', an essential step on the road to the philosophers stone and - possibly - an elixir of eternal life.
The unicorn - I suppose Freud would have something to say about this - can only be captured by a virgin. The usual technique was to sit the virgin down in a forest and wait for the unicorn to come and fall asleep with its horned head in her lap. Then the hunters would fall upon it.
There is a wonderful sequence of tapestries called La Dame à la licorne. I have seen some of the images restored by the tapestry experts of West Dean College and, of course, read the novel by Tracy Chevalier that they inspired.
Perhaps my favourite mythical creature is the griffin. It is certainly one of the oldest heraldic symbols with deep origins in many different parts of the world.
The griffin is a four-footed bird with the body of a lion. Often used a symbol of immortality, a griffin is supposed to mated with a mare and produced the great steed of Alexander the Great.
There are more, of course - the phoenix which is reborn from its own ashes; the sirens of the sea, sometimes beautiful enchanting women, often just a woman's head and shoulders with the belly of a wolf and the tail of a dolphin; dragons, of course, with anything from two to two dozen legs, whose skin can be worked to provide unbreakable boots or shields, whose blood can be used to harden metal or to enable the drinker to understand the speech of birds.
Then there is the most interesting monster of them all - to me, just now: the sphinx.
I'm taking a particular interest in Egypt just at the moment. I think I'll come back to that next week ...
... with a new riddle in the Sepulchre.
