Record #14
Basilisk
A deadly crowned serpent whose gaze brings death, sterility, and corruption.
Original Text
Down through the ages, the Basilisk (also known as the Cockatrice) grows increasingly ugly and horrendous until today it is forgotten. Its name comes from the Greek and means ‘little king’; to the Elder Pliny (VIII, 33), it was a serpent bearing a bright spot in the shape of a crown on its head. Dating from the Middle Ages, it becomes a four-legged cock with a crown, yellow feathers, wide thorny wings, and a serpent’s tail ending either in a hook or in another cock’s head. The change in its image is reflected in a change in its name; Chaucer in The Persone’s Tale’ speaks of the ‘basilicok’ (‘the basilicok sleeth folk by the venim of his sighte’). One of the plates illustrating Aldrovandi’s Natural History ofSerpents and Dragons gives the Basilisk scales instead of feathers, and the use of eight legs. (According to the Younger Edda, Odin’s horse Sleipnir also had eight legs.) What remains constant about the Basilisk is the deadly effect of its stare and its venom. The Gorgons’ eyes turned living beings into stone; Lucan tells us that from the blood of one of them all the serpents of Libya sprang - the asp, the amphisbaena, the ammodyte, and the Basilisk. We give the following passages, in a literal translation, from Book IX of Pharsalia:
In this body [Medusa’s] first did noxious nature produce deadly plagues; from those jaws snakes poured forth whizzing hisses with vibrating tongues, which, after the manner of a woman’s hair flowing along the back, flapped about the very neck of the delighted Medusa. Upon her forehead turned towards you erect did serpents rise, and viper’s venom flowed from her combed locks.
What avails a Basilisk being pierced by the spear of the wretched Murrus? Swift flies the poison along the weapon, and fastens upon the hand; which, instantly, with sword unsheathed, he smites, and at the same moment severs it entirely from the arm; and, looking upon the dreadful warning of a death his own, he stands in safety, his hand perishing.
The Basilisk dwelled in the desert; or, more accurately, it made the desert. Birds fell dead at its feet and the earth’s fruits blackened and rotted; the water of the streams where it quenched its thirst remained poisoned for centuries. That its mere glance split rocks and burned grass has been attested by Pliny. Of all animals, the weasel alone was unaffected by the monster and could be counted on to attack it on sight; it was also believed that the crowing of a rooster sent the Basilisk scurrying. The seasoned traveller was careful to provide himself with either a caged rooster or a weasel before venturing into unknown territory. Another weapon was the mirror, its own image would strike the Basilisk dead.
Isidore of Seville and the compilers of the Speculum Triplex (Threefold Mirror) rejected Lucan’s fables and sought a rational explanation for the Basilisk’s origin. (They could not deny its existence, since the Vulgate translates the Hebrew word Tsepha, the name of a poisonous reptile, as ‘cockatrice’.) The theory that gained most favour was that of a misshapen egg laid by a cock and hatched by a snake or a toad. In the seventeenth century, Sir Thomas Browne found this explanation as farfetched as the monster itself. At much the same time, Quevedo wrote his romance ’The Basilisk’, in which we read:
Siestá vivo quien te vio,
Toda su historia es mentira, Pues si no murió, te ignora, Y si murió no loafirma.
[If the man who saw you is still alive, your whole story is a lie, since if he has not died he cannot have seen you, and if he has died, he cannot tell what he saw.]
In this body [Medusa’s] first did noxious nature produce deadly plagues; from those jaws snakes poured forth whizzing hisses with vibrating tongues, which, after the manner of a woman’s hair flowing along the back, flapped about the very neck of the delighted Medusa. Upon her forehead turned towards you erect did serpents rise, and viper’s venom flowed from her combed locks.
What avails a Basilisk being pierced by the spear of the wretched Murrus? Swift flies the poison along the weapon, and fastens upon the hand; which, instantly, with sword unsheathed, he smites, and at the same moment severs it entirely from the arm; and, looking upon the dreadful warning of a death his own, he stands in safety, his hand perishing.
The Basilisk dwelled in the desert; or, more accurately, it made the desert. Birds fell dead at its feet and the earth’s fruits blackened and rotted; the water of the streams where it quenched its thirst remained poisoned for centuries. That its mere glance split rocks and burned grass has been attested by Pliny. Of all animals, the weasel alone was unaffected by the monster and could be counted on to attack it on sight; it was also believed that the crowing of a rooster sent the Basilisk scurrying. The seasoned traveller was careful to provide himself with either a caged rooster or a weasel before venturing into unknown territory. Another weapon was the mirror, its own image would strike the Basilisk dead.
Isidore of Seville and the compilers of the Speculum Triplex (Threefold Mirror) rejected Lucan’s fables and sought a rational explanation for the Basilisk’s origin. (They could not deny its existence, since the Vulgate translates the Hebrew word Tsepha, the name of a poisonous reptile, as ‘cockatrice’.) The theory that gained most favour was that of a misshapen egg laid by a cock and hatched by a snake or a toad. In the seventeenth century, Sir Thomas Browne found this explanation as farfetched as the monster itself. At much the same time, Quevedo wrote his romance ’The Basilisk’, in which we read:
Siestá vivo quien te vio,
Toda su historia es mentira, Pues si no murió, te ignora, Y si murió no loafirma.
[If the man who saw you is still alive, your whole story is a lie, since if he has not died he cannot have seen you, and if he has died, he cannot tell what he saw.]