A small serpent with legs, wings, and a crest like a rooster.

In around 79 AD, Pliny the Elder wrote one of the first accounts of the animal describing it as a snake with a white crown on its head that didn't slither but went upright with one half of its body up off the ground, and was so poisonous that if killed with a spear from horseback the poison would travel up the spear and kill not only the rider but the horse as well.

According to the Penny Cyclopaedia, the Basilisk and the Cockatrice are the same creature of which there are three or four species, one burns everything in its path leaving a barren desert in its wake, the next causes instant death with one look from its eye, the third liquifies flesh with its touch, and the last is born from a chicken egg hatched beneath a toad or a serpent.

Sir Thomas Browne describes the ancient Basilisk and the Cockatrice as two different creatures, he says the Cockatrice has legs, wings, the crest of a rooster, and the tail of a snake while the Basilisk is a small serpent that lifts its head and has a white crown.

In Scandinavian folklore, a Basilisk will form in a barrel of mead if it is left for more than twenty years and never opened. Should this happen, the barrel needs to be buried in the ground otherwise the animal will break out and no one will be able to contain it.

Descriptions from the Bible:

"But in the end, it will bite like a snake, and will spread abroad poison like a basilisk" (Proverbs 23:32 Douay Version).

"Rejoice not thou, whole Philistia, that the rod of him that struck thee is broken in pieces: for out of the root of the serpent shall come forth a basilisk, and his seed shall swallow the bird" (Isaiah 14:29).

"The burden of the beasts of the south. In a land of trouble and distress, from whence come the lioness, and the lion, the viper and the flying basilisk, they carry their riches upon the shoulders of beasts, and their treasures upon the bunches of camels to a people that shall not be able to profit them" (Isaiah 30:6).

Also known as Regulus, and Little King of Serpents.

See Also: Creatures by Type » Serpents

References

The Holy Bible, Douay Version.

Browne, Sir Thomas, & Sayle, Charles (ed.). The Works of Sir Thomas Browne. London: Grant Richards, 1904.

Craigie, William Alexander. Scandinavian Folk-lore. London: Alexander Gardner, 1896.

Knight, Charles. Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. London: C. Knight, 1837.