INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world.
These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.
I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.
Summer has finally come to an end and thank goodness, I am ready for pumpkin spice lattes and halloween. And I’ve missed cooking honestly, as it just gets too hot in my house to cook when it’s hot. I hope you’re as ready for the crisp autumn weather as I am!
DESCRIPTION:
This week, we’re staying over here in chilly Britain, specifically England but can be found in the rest of Europe too - but is one fiercely remembered within medieval folklore. Yes, we’re looking at the Cockatrice this week!
What is a Cockatrice I hear you say? Well it’s considered a heraldic monster but is mostly described as a two-legged dragon or serpent-like monster, with a rooster’s head. They would have massive talons, with draconic tails and wings - but the full head of a chicken, wattle and comb included. They would be coloured in a dark brown hue around their face where they would have feathers, but their scaly draconic bodies would either be grey or light brown in colour.
They were typically around 3-6 feet tall, so couldn’t really be confused for a chicken or a dragon, however, were extremely territorial and aggressive. These monsters would live in caves and have their own lairs within them, where they would live and breed other Cockatrice as they would usually live in flocks, much like actual chickens. Female Cockatrice were extremely rare, but it was enough of a population for them to have bred throughout their time in folklore.
Their powers though are some of the most interesting things about them, they had the power to petrify any creature bitten or looked at by them, turning them to stone - and you may be thinking - this sounds very much like the Basilisk and you are right and we’ll get onto their history together later on. They were not able to petrify each other, but other creatures could petrify them such as Basilisks, but when they attacked - you would have the whole flock on you, making them quite frightening opponents. As well as this, they had massive claws that they could rip flesh with, which I imagine wasn’t particularly pleasant either.
The only animal that was immune completely to both Cockatrice and Basilisk petrification was the weasel, and it was believed that a Cockatrice would die instantly when they heard a rooster crow, or when it looked upon itself in a reflective surface.
I kind of talked about their reproduction, but the way they are born is something to add to their tale. It is believed that a Cockatrice would only be born if a cockerel had an egg, bear in mind, they are male chickens, then a toad or snake would incubate it til it hatched. If you did find a Cockatrice egg, it was advised that you throw it over the family home, allowing it to land on the other side of the house without hitting it.
Lastly, they were meat eaters - and would generally eat rodents and smaller mammals to sate their appetite, but they could eat bigger animals including humans if they were hunting in a flock.
ORIGIN:
For etymology, the word Cockatrice comes from the Old French cocatris, meaning tracker - however, this word came from the Latin calcatrix, which was a translation of the Greek ichneumon, which makes this so much more interesting.
Also interesting in this is the locale of where this monster is considered from with this etymology, as it is considered an English monster and one that is specifically from English heraldry, or coat of arms/shield iconography. However, there were reports of this monster throughout France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland as well - although nowhere near as many.
For history though, we know that the bird is English because the first ever mention of it was within the English translation of the Bible if you can believe it. This was in the Book of Isaiah, and was the word used for the translation of asp and adder, which are two types of venomous snakes. This was written up in the 14th century, around 1300’s and during the Middle Ages of Europe and England. This was considered a heraldic time - where beasts such as dragons, wyrms, pixies, fairies and cockatrice came into our folklore in droves and were represented within a lot of medieval architecture and as I said, coat of arms and shields. In this form, Cockatrice were considered valiant defenders as they were petrifying to look at - but were not particularly common, certainly not as much as lions, dragons, unicorns and horses were, and still are today.
The myth of the Cockatrice within this came from Pliny’s Natural History, which is one of the oldest history books known to man from the Roman Empire, dating back to 77AD, so is massively older than the translation of the Bible. Pliny the Elder actually died during the Vesuvius eruption in Pompeii in 79 AD, so you can imagine how old this book is just based off of that. It was a modern encyclopaedia of everything he had ever researched, including many mythical beasts. The Cockatrice or the ichneumon at the time, was described as a draconic rooster within it, but was said to wait for crocodiles to open their jaws to pick its teeth clean - which is what modern day Trochilus birds do.
Then to follow this, in 1180, the Basilisk came into folklore through De Naturis Rerum by Alexander Neckam - who described the way they were born the same way, rooster eggs hatched by snakes with the power to petrify with a glance - linking the two in folklore for the rest of their days. It’s still said that the ultimate enemy of both a basilisk and a cockatrice is a rooster calling in the morning, and both could petrify the other, but not the same species. They also both had the same animal be completely unaffected by them, the weasel, and in general were the opposites of each other in terms of their appearance, with the Basilisk taking a more serpentine figure with feathers and the Cockatrice having a more chicken look with some serpent features. These monsters have been merged throughout history, and only recently have been separated again by the likes of Dungeons and Dragons, where they have been defined more by their differing animal features.
There is also a belief that there is an Egyptian history tidbit in this monster, as the eggs of the ibis bird were very often smashed in the fear that the snakes they ate would produce a half-snake, half-bird monster. However, they’re also written into fictional history, as they’re mentioned in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Richard 3rd.
Here’s the sections from both, starting with the death scene from Romeo and Juliet;
Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but Ay
And that bare vowel I shall poison more
That the death darting eye of a cockatrice
And for Richard 3rd, where the Duchess of York compares her son to one;
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.
They are also of course mentioned in Harry Potter, but they have truly made their mark within the English folklore space as one of the medieval greats.
In terms of mythical comparisons, of course, we do have to think about Basilisks, but we’ve already done the deep dive into them, and if you want to hear more - I have covered them in another episode, where I do also mention the Cockatrice. Otherwise, we do have to relate them to Gorgons due to their stone turning nature - these monsters from Greek mythology were infamous for their petrifying nature, with Medusa being the most famous of them all. Considering too that Medusa and her sisters are usually portrayed as half-snake, half-woman, you can definitely see the comparison to the Basilisk, and in turn, the Cockatrice.
In real life though, we’ve not really got many things to compare it to other than real life chickens and snakes, and some weird egg laying habits. We do know that snakes eat chicken eggs, or any other eggs that they come across, so it may have been that someone spotted a snake being defensive over its dinner and thought it was incubating it? I’m not sure, but they are a hard one to compare to something that we know exists, especially a chicken at 5 foot tall - unless we’re also talking about emus, ostriches and cassowaries, none of which live anywhere near England or the rest of Europe, and do lay considerably larger eggs of course.
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
Now onto modern media, I’ve included Basilisks in here to fill it out as they are so similar.
For art, have a look at medieval heraldry for this as you can get some really cool adaptations of this within this art as well as independent stuff this week - I really recommend looking at D&D style art for this for some really cool artistic visions of the Cockatrice.
In movies, we have; the Harry Potter series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them & Basilisk: The Serpent King.
For TV, we have; Berserk, Delicious in Dungeon, One Piece, Saint Seiya, Merlin, Super Sentai, The Witcher, The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Owl House, Little Witch Academia & Wishfart.
In video games, we have ones such as; Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Dragon's Dogma, World of Warcraft, Harry Potter, Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand, Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time, Runescape, NetHack, Total War: Warhammer, Digimon, Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, Terraria, Disgaea, Magic and Mayhem, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Shin Megami Tensei, The Witcher, Megaman Zero, For the King, God of War: Chains of Olympus, Magic Shop, Final Fantasy 8, 10 & 15, Age of Wonders, Balacera Brothers, Dark Souls, EverQuest 2, Elden Ring, ARK: Survival Evolved & Dragon City.
My book recommendation this week is for Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore: From Medieval Times to the Present Day by Juliette Wood for a great insight into all the monsters we cover, but going all the way back to Medieval Britain and how they were so important within culture and society.
DO I THINK THEY EXISTED?
Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?
Do I think there are man sized, dragon/snake chickens roaming the earth? It’s got to be a no from me, not to mention that petrification, whilst the idea is scary, is not something we have ever found within human mythology. Although statues can look pretty realistic, I don’t think we can blame them for statues in gardens, which makes me sad a little bit but is also super understandable.
I do love medieval monsters though, and especially ones that come from England which are kind of lost to the ether a little bit and it makes me happy to bring them back into the spotlight a little, and I do really love looking at monsters from D&D too as there is always a great amount of information and art surrounding them too.
But what do you think? Did the Cockatrice petrify cave goers of England? Let me know on Twitter!
OUTRO:
An egg-cellent monster this week - see what I did there? It’s one that’s been a little lost to folklore, but one that I do try to include, especially when talking about medieval folklore - as it is truly one of the greats, and definitely one of the strangest.
Next week, we’re getting back into the water and heading out to the seven seas for a legendary sea monster, but one that you might not know the name of, but have definitely seen on pirate maps of your childhoods. We’re going fishing for Ziphius next Thursday - so I hope you’re bringing your biggest bait!
Just a quick note to say that the week after next is my yearly September 2 week break - so I will be gone from the 21st all the way up til 12th October for a well deserved hiatus. But of course, we’ll be back full time until December.
For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok, Youtube and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - you can also find us on Goodpods, Buymeacoffee and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.
Come join the fun though and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.
But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.