hybrid rooster-headed beast of European folklore
Cockatrice
The cockatrice is a fantastical creature of European tradition, especially English, with the body of a dragon or serpent, wings and a rooster's head. Its reputation for killing with a glance made it one of the most feared monsters of medieval and Renaissance folklore.
The myth
According to medieval tradition, the cockatrice hatched from a chicken egg incubated by a toad or a snake. Accounts stress its deadly power: it could kill by glance, touch or breath. Late medieval bestiaries added that only the weasel was immune to its gaze, that it died instantly on hearing a rooster crow, and that showing it its own reflection in a mirror was one of the few sure ways to destroy it.
The legend's roots go back to Pliny the Elder's Natural History, which describes the ichneumon, a creature that waited for the crocodile to open its jaws so it could clean its teeth. Alexander Neckam, around 1180, described the basilisk as the product of a rooster's egg. Later, John Trevisa's translation of Bartholomeus Anglicus (1397) made cockatrice a synonym for basilisk, although the basilisk is usually shown without wings. Some scholars suggest a possible Egyptian folk root, linked to the destruction of ibis eggs out of fear of hybrid snake-birds.
Legacy
The cockatrice appears in Wycliffe's Bible (1382) and in Elizabethan drama: Shakespeare's Duchess of York compares her son Richard to one in Richard III, and Juliet mentions it in Romeo and Juliet. In heraldry it was the emblem of the Langleys of Agecroft Hall, and today it is the symbol of 3 (Fighter) Squadron of the Royal Air Force. In modern times it appears in role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and in the Harry Potter series.
Ancient sources: Pliny the Elder (Natural History), Alexander Neckam (De naturis rerum, c. 1180) and Bartholomeus Anglicus (De proprietatibus rerum, c. 1260), in John Trevisa's English translation.