Of Kirins and Unicorns

Nothing could have excited my imagination more than the Guardian's recent reports on the alleged discovery in North Korea of Kiringul (unicorn's lair), associated with ancient king Tongmyong who, according to Korean legend, rode on unicorns.



A king rode unicorns in Korean legend?!?  Why did I not know of this before?  I find this especially interesting because in the Korean graphic novel series Bride of the Water God by Mi-Kyung Yun there is a character called Lynn, who appears to be a unicorn.  In fact, he has two forms.  In one, he is a winged unicorn.  (He looks like a horse but with more of a cow's tail).  In his other form, he looks like a human, but with pointed ears and a unicorn-like horn in the middle of his forehead.  He is ridden in his horse form by another character, Huye.

According to the Guardian, Korean unicorns are called kirins or qilins.  They are described either as a 4-legged beast with a dragon's head (doesn't sound much like Lynn) or having the body of a deer, the tail of a cow, hooves and a mane.  (Now that sounds much more like Lynn, doesn't it?)

Interestingly, when I looked up kirin in the Encyclopedia Mythica, it had this to say:

 "Kirin.  The Japanese unicorn, an animal-god who punishes the wicked with its single horn.  It protects the just and grants them good luck.  Seeing a kirin is considered an omenn of extreme good luck - if one is a virtuous person."  (By Micha F Lindemans)

So the kirin is common to Japan and Korea at least.  Interestingly, in one of the Tales of the Otori books by Lian Herne, a giraffe is brought to Japan and they refer to it as the kirin.  

Any professors of East Asian studies out there?  I would love to know more...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Praise of Hairy Women

Image
Who doesn't love Lettie Lutz, the Bearded Lady character in The Greatest Showman, who sings   the iconic anthem, This is Me ? Yesterday, my daughter took me to a singalong version of the film for a Mother's Day treat, and we both belted out This is Me at the tops of our voices. Both Lettie and the song have become symbols for anyone who feels marginalised or different. It so happens that last week I watched another film about a hairy woman, the very beautiful Norwegian coming-of-age film,   Løvekvinnen , or The Lion Woman, based on a book by   Erik Fosnes Hanson.   It tells the story of Eva Arctander, who is born in a small town in the early 20th century and struggles to find her place in the world. Especially, it concerns her relationship with her stationmaster father, widowed at her birth. I loved this film - which I watched on Netflix - and I definitely want to see it again. One of my best reads of last year was Orphans of the Carnival by Carol Bi...
Read more

Beauty and the Beast: King of the Wood

Image
She asked for a rose.  Her father reaches out to pluck one.  Suddenly, a Beast appears, furious, accusing him of theft.  The penalty is death.  Or the surrender of his daughter. But why such a harsh penalty for plucking a rose?  Much has been said - or invented - on the possible meaning of the rose.  When the last petal falls, the Beast's fate is sealed eternally.  It is the first thing he has learned to love.  It symbolises virginity; the plucking of the rose mirrors the deflowering of the daughter; the aristocratic Beast is excercising his  droit du seigneur  over Beauty, the merchant's child. But why should the plucking of a flower carry such a heavy penalty?  And why does the same motif occur in other fairy tales?  For example, Rapunzel , in which the father must sacrifice his child as payment for picking herbs from the Witch's garden. One answer may lie in ancient mythology.  Most ancient polytheistic religions have s...
Read more

Amputation in Fairy Tales

Image
                            The Red Shoes: The Archers/J Arthur Rank, 1948 The other night, I was watching the classic 1948 film, The Red Shoes.  When the film was over, I decided to read up on the original tale by Hans Christian Anderson, which brought me back to the subject of amputation in fairy tales. When I was writing my novel, Silver Hands (based on Grimm's fairy tale, The Handless Maiden) I had to think carefully about how I was going to approach amputation in my re-telling.  I decided early on that, in my version, the hands were not going to grow back as they do in my source tale.  The 2012 Paralympics made everyone in my country much more aware of the achievements of amputees.  In real life, limbs do not grow back; what can grow, however, is confidence and new abilities.  This was what I wanted to portray in Silver Hands.  Margaret learns new skills in painting and calligraphy, ...
Read more