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Referring back to the " 300 Animals," the natural history that was considered good enough for the people living in the year of grace 1786, we find, after the account of the Dart, "so called from his flying like an arrow from the tops of trees and hedges upon men, by which means he stings and wounds them to death," the following description :-"
The Cockatrice is called the king of serpents, not from his bigness-for he is much inferior in this respect to many serpents-but because of his majestic pace, for he does not creep upon the ground, like other serpents, but goes half upright, for which cause all other serpents avoid him; and it seems nature de-signed him that pre-eminence, by the crown or coronet upon his head. Writers differ concerning the production of this animal. Some re of opinion that it is brought forth of a cock's egg sat upon by a snake or toad, and so becomes a cockatrice. It is said to be half a foot in length, the hinder part like a serpent, the fore part like a cock. Others are of opinion that the cock that lays the egg sits upon and hatches it himself. These monsters are bred in Africa and some parts of the world." In England it would appear, so far as we have observed the matter, that the hens have entirely usurped the egg-laying department, and we are therefore spared the mortification of finding that our hoped-for chick has assumed the less welcome form of a cockatrice, for we shall see that the advent of a cockatrice is no laughing matter. The book goes on to tell us that authors differ about the bigness of it, for some say it is a span in compass and half a foot long, while others, with a truer sense of the marvellous, realise more fully that bulk is a potent element in all such matters, and at once make it four feet long. Its poison is so strong that there is no cure for it, and the air is in such a degree affected by its presence that no creature can live near it. It kills, we are assured, not only by its touch, but even the sight of the cockatrice, like that of the basilisk, is death. We read, for instance, in "Romeo and Juliet" of "the death-darting eye of cockatrice;" and again in "King Richard IIL"-" A cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world whose unavoided eye' is murtherous;" while in " Twelfth Night " we find the passage, " This will so fright them both, that they will kill one another by the look, like cockatrices." After this we can scarcely wonder at a certain vagueness of description, as those who never saw the animal have full licence of description, while those, less fortunate, who have had an opportunity of studying from the life have forfeited their own in doing so. The only hope of getting an idea of it would be the discovery of a dead specimen, for we read that "as all other serpents are afraid of the sight and hissing of a cockatrice, so is the cockatrice itself very fearful of a weasel, which after it has eaten rue will set upon and destroy the cockatrice. Besides this little creature, it is said there is no other animal in the world able to contend with it." We can well imagine the indignant astonishment of the cockatrice, after being for years the monarch of all it surveyed, when the gallant little weasel, strong in the triple armour which makes a quarrel just, and duly fortified by the internal application of rue, charges boldly home and takes him, monstrorum rex, by the throat. At the time that our authorised version of the Old Testament was made there was a sufficient belief in the creature to make the translation of some Hebrew word seem correctly rendered by the word cockatrice, for we read in the book of Isaiah that one sign of the millennial peace shall be that the child shall put his hand, unharmed, upon the den of the cockatrice ; and a little farther on we find the passage, "For out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent." In the fifty-ninth chapter the workers of iniquity are described as hatch-. ing the cockatrice egg, and amongst the judgments pro-. nounced upon the impenitent Jews by the prophet Jeremiah we find the verse, " Behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, amongst you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite yob." The heraldic cockatrice is represented as having the head and legs of a cock, a scaly and serpent-like body, and the wings of a dragon. Guillim in his " Heraldry" says that "the Cockatrice is called in Latin Regulus, for that he seemeth to be a little King among Serpents : not in regard of his Quantity, but in respect of the Infection of his pestiferous and poisonous Aspect wherewith he poisoneth the Air. Not unlike those devillish Witches that 1do work the Destruction of silly Infants, as also of the Cattel of such their Neighbours whose prosperous Estate is to them a most grievous Eye-sore. Of such Virgil in his Bucolicks makes mention, saying, I know not what wicked Eye bath be-witched my tender Lambs." The belief in the evil eye has been almost universal, and may be found in tribes the most remote from each other either in distance or in time. If it were not that Guillim is so ostentatiously loyal, and, like all heralds, a zealous upholder of rank and state, one might suspect him almost of a touch of bitter sarcasm in ascribing royal rank to the cockatrice, not from his magnanimity, not from his noble bearing, not from his beauty, but from the power of inflicting in-juries that he so especially displays. When we consider what sort of a sovereign politically, socially, and every way the second Charles was, Guillim's dedication of his book to him errs somewhat, perhaps, on the side of fulsome and sickening adulation :-" To the most August Charles the Second, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. Dread Sovereign, Here is a Firmament of Stars that shine not without your Benign Beam ; you are the Sun of our Hemisphere that sets a splendour on the Nobility : For as they are Jewels and Ornaments to your Crown, so they derive their lustre and value from thence. From your Breast, as from a Fountain, the young Plants of honour are cherisht and nurst up. Your vertuous Atcheivements are their Warrant and Example, and your Bounty the Guerdon of their Merit. And as all the Roman Emperors after Julius Caesar, were desirous to be called Imperatores and Caesares after him, so shall all succeeding Princes in this our Albion (in emulation of your Vertues) be ambitious to bear your Name to Posterity. |