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The mythical animals best known to contemporary popular culture, such as the mermaid, the unicorn and the dragon, are among those which have excited imaginations for hundreds of years, appearing in many cross-cultural variations. One of the reasons for the popular appeal of these beings is that, unlike the more outlandish creatures born out of nightmare or conceived to populate frightening stories, these iconic monsters seem potentially, if not probably, real to the human imagination.
The narwal, a small whale which inhabits the Northern oceans, sports a long, spiraling ivory horn, which in appearance and dimensions exactly matches the horn of the mythical unicorn. Many of these horns were either honestly believed to be unicorn horns by the sailors who found them or knowingly traded to unwary land-dwellers as the same. Due to the import of a large number of these horns, unicorn horn, or alicorn, used as a medicinal product and in the manufacture of ritual items, was readily available on the European market during the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries. The practice of either innocently or deceptively passing off a number of different materials, such as mother-of-pearl, snake or crocodile parts or unusual stone formations as dragon's teeth or scales is in the same tradition, although significantly less common.
Considerably more of the "evidence" of fabulous beasts, like the innumerable false religious relics which have come into circulation, is frankly fabricated in order to attract attention and to profit from the sale or display of the items.
Many sailors have returned to Europe or North America from the Orient or the tropics with the bodies of a number of small, fierce-looking creatures in tow. The little beasts, which were used by merchants and tricksters to frighten or mystify mainlanders, were leathery and scaled, with whip-like tails, strange, malformed wings and large, empty eye sockets. Pirates and traders called these things devil-fish, basilisks and dragon spawn. However, those wise to the gaff called them Jenny Hanivers. The exact origin of the name is a mystery, but the origin of the creature itself is not. The typical Jenny Haniver was nothing more than a flatfish, such as a skate or ray, cut apart and rearranged so that the creature appeared upright, with the fins trimmed to resemble wings. The black pits of the creature's eyes were actually the ex-fish's nostrils. |
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