Escornau

 


The escornau was an unusual unicorn from Ahigal, Spain. It was a vicious beast the terrorized the village sometime in the 16th century. It was a hybrid creature with the head of a boar, ears of a rabbit, front body of a bull and back end of a horse. It had a cork screw unicorn horn in the middle of its forehead.


There are two versions of its origin. Either the escornau was sent by god as a punishment for the village's sinful ways. Alternately the beast was the union between two different species of farm animal. Pretty much any combination of the four animals that make up the escornau were said to be the parents, a cow and a stallion, or a bull and a sow, or a horse and a rabbit, I honestly don't know how that one would work. Either way, there was so much sin in this village that even the farm animals per partaking in it.


The escornau would use its horn as a weapon, impaling its victims with it. It would sharpen its horn on rocks to keep its tip as sharp as a spear. The beast would attack everything in sight, men, women, children, farm animals of all kinds. Men and farm animals it would leave on the ground where they had been gored, but the escornau would carry around the lifeless bodies of women like trophies impaled on its horn. The beast would kill simply for the thrill of killing and leave its victims uneaten. Instead its favourite food was pigeons, of all things.

The escornau proved to be impossible to fight. Its hide was too thick for bullets or arrows to pierce and the beast was too fearsome for anyone carrying a sword or a spear to approach. The people of Ahigal realized their only hope was to pray to god for salvation. They tried exactly this, but their efforts were disorganized and half hearted. Their feeble attempts at praying offered them no protection from the escornau, who ran through the group of villagers praying in the town square and trampled them. The village then called on the knightly Order of the Rosary. The knights organized a procession from the church to the highest hill in the area. Again the escornau tried to interrupt the prayers and proceedings of the villagers by attacking them. Yet this time, with their more organized and heartfelt efforts, the villagers were protected from the beast's attacks. There was a divine force which paralyzed the escornau when it approached the procession. Once the procession and the escornau reached the top of the hill the escornau was exploded by the divine force which held it back. The hill was then named Canchu la Sangri, because of the red coloring left by the escornau's blood.

The horn of the escornau was taken back to the Hermitage of Christ church and kept on display as a reminder of the village's victory. Like many unicorn horns the escornau's horn had the ability to heal. Because of this the horn was regarded as a relic. After a while the villagers became so enamoured by its healing properties that they relied on the horn rather than prayer to god. There's two ways the story ends after this. Either they shaved so much off the horn to use it as a healing powder that they used up the horn and lost their trophy. Or when the bishop of Cornia he was so disgusted that they relied more on the horn than Jesus that he threw the horn into a fire to destroy it.


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