Cockatrice

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For other uses, see Cockatrice (disambiguation).
A cockatrice overdoor at Belvedere Castle (1869) in New York's Central Park.

A cockatrice is a mythical beast, essentially a two-legged dragon or serpent-like creature with a rooster's head. Described by Laurence Breiner as "an ornament in the drama and poetry of the Elizabethans", it was featured prominently in English thought and myth for centuries.

Legend

Origins

The cockatrice was first described in its current form in the late fourteenth century.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives a derivation from Old French cocatris, from medieval Latin calcatrix, a translation of the Greek ichneumon, meaning tracker. The twelfth century legend was based on a reference in Pliny's Natural History[1] that the ichneumon lay in wait for the crocodile to open its jaws for the trochilus bird to enter and pick its teeth clean.[2] An extended description of the cockatriz by the 15th-century Spanish traveller in Egypt, Pedro Tafur, makes it clear that this refers to the Nile crocodile.[3]

According to Alexander Neckam's De naturis rerum (ca 1180), the cockatrice was the product of an egg laid by a cock (a male chicken) and incubated by a toad; a snake might be substituted in re-tellings. Cockatrice became seen as synonymous with basilisk when the basiliscus in Bartholomeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum (ca 1260) was translated by John Trevisa as cockatrice (1397).[4] A basilisk, however, is usually depicted without wings.

It is thought that a cock egg would birth a cockatrice, and could be prevented by tossing the yolkless egg over the family house, landing on the other side of the house, without allowing the egg to hit the house.

Abilities

It has the reputed ability to kill people by either looking at them—"the death-darting eye of Cockatrice"[5]—touching them, or sometimes breathing on them.

It was repeated in the late-medieval bestiaries that the weasel is the only animal that is immune to the glance of a cockatrice.[citation needed] It was also thought that a cockatrice would die instantly upon hearing a rooster crow,[6] and according to legend, having a cockatrice look at itself in a mirror is one of the few sure-fire ways to kill it.[7]

The cockatrice was also said to fly using the set of wings affixed to its back.[citation needed]

Cultural references

The cockatrice is mentioned in Brunetto Latini's Li livres dou tresor (ca 1260).

The first use of the word in English was in John Wyclif's 1382 translation of the Bible[8] to translate different Hebrew words.[9] This usage was followed by the King James Version, the word being used several times.[10] The Revised Version—following the tradition established by Jerome's Vulgate basiliscus—renders the word "basilisk", and the New International Version translates it as "viper". In Proverbs 23:32 the similar Hebrew tzeph'a is rendered "adder", both in the Authorized Version and the Revised Version.

In Shakespeare's play "Richard III", the Duchess of York compares her son Richard to a cockatrice:

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O ill-dispersing wind of misery!
O my accursed womb, the bed of death!
A cockatrice hast thou hatch'd to the world,
Whose unavoided eye is murderous.[11]

In England the town most associated with the cockatrice is the village of Wherwell, near Andover in Hampshire. The story is that the cockatrice terrorised the village until it was imprisoned in the dungeons below Wherwell Priory. A prize of land was offered to anyone who could kill the creature. None were successful, until a man named Green lowered a mirror into the dungeon. The cockatrice battled against its own reflection until exhausted, at which point Green was able to kill it. Today there is an area of land near Wherwell called Green's Acres. For many years a weather vane in the shape of a cockatrice adorned the church of St. Peter and Holy Cross in Wherwell until it was removed to Andover Museum.

Laurence Breiner also identified the uses of the cockatrice in alchemy (Breiner 1979).

The cockatrice appears as an enemy and legendary creature in the Castlevania videogame series. In most games it is associated with the stone element and capable of inflicting petrification status with either its breath or a beam fired from its eye. In Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, the Cockatrice appears on a DSS card that represents the stone element allowing the player to petrify enemies with magic-based attacks and can even be summoned when combined with the Uranus card. In Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow it appears as an enemy and its obtainable soul grants the protagonist Soma Cruz the ability to fire petrifying beams. In the series it is related to the Basilisk which appears as a stronger palette swap of the Cockatrice.

A cockatrice is shown to inhibit the Everfree Forest during the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode Stare Master. Unlike most depictions of the creature, this one lacks the ability to kill other creatures with its gaze, instead only turning them to stone.

In heraldry

Arthur Fox-Davies describes the cockatrice as "comparatively rare" in heraldry.[12]

It was the heraldic beast of the Langleys of Agecroft Hall in Lancashire, England as far back as the 14th century.[13]

It is also the symbol of 3 (Fighter) Squadron, a fighter squadron of the Royal Air Force.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Historia Naturalis viii.37.90.
  2. ↑ Breiner 1979.
  3. ↑ Pedro Tafur, Andanças e viajes.
  4. ↑ Breiner 1979:35.
  5. ↑ Romeo and Juliet, iii.ii.47. The idea of vision in an "eye-beam", a stream emanating from the eye was inherited by the Renaissance from Antiquity; it forms an elaborately-worked-out simile in John Donne's "The Exstacie": "Our eye-beames twisted and did thred/ Our eyes, upon one double string."
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Hebrew word #8577 in Strong's Concordance; Hebrew word #6848 in Strong's Concordance; Hebrew word #660 in Strong's Concordance; Hebrew word #8314 in Strong's Concordance.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Arthur Fox-Davies, A Complete Guide to Heraldry, Bonanza Books, New York, 1978, p 227.
  13. ↑ Jefferson Collins – "Secrets from the Curator's Closet" – Agecroft Hall Museum http://www.curatorscloset.blogspot.com/

References

Further reading

  • Laurence A. Breiner, "The Career of the Cockatrice", Isis 70:1 (March 1979), pp. 30–47
  • P. Ansell Robin, "The Cockatrice and the 'New English Dictionary'", in Animal Lore in English Literature (London 1932).

External links

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