Cockatrice

Origin and myth

The cockatrice is what happens when a translation goes astray. The word first appears in English in the late 14th-century Wycliffe Bible, where it names a deadly serpent in Isaiah. It came from Old French cocatris, from medieval Latin calcatrix, which according to the Oxford English Dictionary was a rendering of the Greek ichneumon, "the tracker". In 1397 John Trevisa, translating the encyclopedia of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, rendered basiliscus as "cockatrice", and the two creatures merged. The name attached itself to an existing legend: the belief, set down by Alexander Neckam around 1180, that a basilisk hatched from a cockerel's egg incubated by a toad.

Once the two names were linked, the cockatrice took on a life of its own. Over the late Middle Ages artists increasingly gave it a rooster's head and legs on a dragon's body. It kept all the basilisk's powers - a killing gaze, poisonous breath, death by weasel or by hearing a cock crow - but was more often shown as a farmyard horror than a desert serpent. English local legends keep the mirror motif. At Wherwell in Hampshire a cockatrice imprisoned under the priory was defeated when a man named Green lowered a mirror into its dungeon, let it exhaust itself fighting its reflection, and then killed it. At Saffron Walden in Essex a similar monster, usually called a basilisk, was slain by a knight whose armour was covered in crystal glass.

Heraldry treats the cockatrice as a wyvern with a cock's head. It is comparatively rare, but the Langley family of Agecroft Hall used it as their badge, and it remains the emblem of No. 3 Squadron of the Royal Air Force.

Appearance

The cockatrice is a compact creature, roughly the size of a large rooster or a small dog. From the front it is a bird: a rooster's head with a serrated comb, wattles beneath the beak, a hooked beak and round, staring eyes. The neck is feathered down to the shoulders, where the feathers give way to scales.

The body is that of a small wyvern: two bird-like legs with sharp spurs at the heel, a barrel chest, and bat-like membranous wings folded along the back. The tail is a long serpent's tail, sometimes ending in a second head or a barb, and is usually posed in a coil or an S-curve.

Colour is rarely specified in the sources. Painted examples vary; a common modern scheme is a red comb and wattles, a golden or bronze neck, a green scaled body and dark wings.

In modern fantasy

The cockatrice appears in Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder as a low-level monster with a petrifying attack, and it turns up in many video games and gamebooks, from Golden Axe and Fighting Fantasy to Dragon's Dogma. It is often played for slight absurdity - a chicken that can kill you - and that mix of comic and dangerous has made it popular with miniature sculptors and tabletop players as a memorable low-tier encounter.

3D printing notes

The cockatrice is small, so at 28-32 mm it needs resin to preserve the comb, wattles and feather detail; FDM would blur the head to a lump. Print it tilted 30 degrees with supports under the tail, the beak and the wing tips. Folded wings simplify the print considerably; spread wings should be printed as separate parts.

At 75 mm the creature becomes an excellent display piece. Resin is still preferred for the feathers, but FDM with a 0.2 mm nozzle can handle the body if the head is printed separately in resin.

At 150 mm and up, split the model into body, head, tail and wings. The serpent tail lies flat on the bed for FDM printing; the feathered neck and head are worth printing in resin. A cockatrice standing over a petrified farmer or a stone chicken makes a strong diorama and gives the model a stable footprint.

Painting and display

Play up the rooster. A bright red comb and wattles, a glossy black beak and a neck of copper-gold hackle feathers give the head instant readability; dry-brush the feathers with a lighter gold and glaze the tips with red-brown. The scaled body can be dark green or blue-black with a brown wash, and the wings a dull leather brown with a lighter dry-brush along the fingers.

The eyes should be bright and glazed, perhaps a lurid yellow. Base ideas include a farmyard with straw and a petrified weasel, or a mossy well. If you want lighting, a small LED under a translucent resin egg on the base is an amusing nod to the creature's origin.

Related creatures

The Basilisk is the cockatrice's original and in most medieval texts the same creature under a different name. The Wyvern supplies its two-legged, winged body, and the Griffin is the other great bird-hybrid of heraldry.

Sources

• Wikipedia, Cockatrice, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockatrice
• Wikipedia, Wherwell, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wherwell
• Mysterious Britain, Saffron Walden Basilisk, https://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/?p=3372

If you would like a cockatrice printed and painted for your table or shelf, contact Fantasy Lab 3D through the contact form.