Cockatrice

A cockatrice is a mythical beast looking essentially like a two-legged dragon, wyvern or a serpent-kile creature with a rooster's head that is considered to have some correlations with a basilisk. It was fabled to kill by its glance and could be slain only by tricking it into seeing its own reflection, akin of the gorgon Medusa from greek mythology.

An Egyptian animal of some sort, the mortal enemy of the crocodile, which it tracks down and kills. This vague sense became hopelessly confused in the Christian West, and in England the word ended up applied to the equivalent of the basilisk.

Popularly associated with cock (n.1), hence the fable that it was a serpent hatched from a cock's egg. It also sometimes was confused with the crocodile. Belief in them persisted even among the educated because the word was used in the KJV several times to translate a Hebrew word for "serpent." In heraldry, a beast half cock, half serpent.

Also, in old slang, "a loose woman" (1590s).

Etymology

The cockatrice takes its name from both cock (rooster) and crocodile (old French, cocatris)

From Old French "cocatriz" and altered "by influence of coq" from Late Latin "calcatrix", latin "calcare "ro tread" Calx "heel", see "calcaneus".

In the Oxford English Dictionary a derivation from Old French cocatris, from medieval Latin calcatrix, a translation of the Greek ichneumon, meaning tracker.

Legend

The first English mention of the cockatrice was in the 14th century John Wycliffe translation of the Bible. The word was used for the translation of various Hebrew words for asp and adder in the Book of Isaiah.

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 cocatriz by the 15th-century Spanish traveller in Egypt, Pedro Tafur, makes it clear that this refers to the Nile crocodile.

Dungeons and Dragons

In Dungeons and Dragons the cockatrice is an eerie, repulsive hybrid ot lizard, cock, and bat . It is infamous for its ability to turn flesh to stone.

Fighting Fantasy Games

On Titan the cockatrice is know as the King of Serpents. With its origins remaining a mystery, the cockatrice's appearance defies logic having a head and body of a cockerel, wings of a bat and a serpent-like tail.

The cockatrice appeared on the "Knights of Doom" game-book as on the "Out of the Pit" bestiary sourcebook.

Cockatrice in Harry Potter's Universe

"During the 1792 Triwizard Tournament, one of the tasks involved capturing a cockatrice. Unfortunately, the cockatrice broke free, and went on a rampage that injured the Heads of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, and the Durmstrang Institute. The incident led to the cancellation of the Triwizard Tournament until its revival in 1994.[2] By the 1990s, the French National Quidditch team emblem sported a white cockatrice holding a broomstick on a blue and beige background."