cockatrice

“For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the LORD.”

That is from the Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 8, verse 17. For several years now, I have been meeting with friends via Zoom to read the Bible together, and this is how far we have gotten. Each person is reading from the bible of their choice and this is what comes up in the King James version. The other versions have vipers and adders but it looks like only the KJV has cockatrices. 

We of course wondered what they were. I have run across it before but get the word mixed up with cicitrix, which means 'scar'. One of our group had heard it come up recently on the Game of Thrones sequel House of the Dragon and told us it was some kind of monster. And  I had a sneaking suspicion that it had come up in The Once and Future King and a sinking feeling that I might have already written it up for this blog and just forgotten it--it's happened before. (I didn't--it was corkindrill that I'd looked into, but to think of T. H. White in relation to this word is not to have gone too far afield, as he was the first and for a while the only person to translate a medieval bestiary into English).

But let's get to it, shall we?

A cockatrice transom at Belvedere Castle in Central Park

As you can see above, a cockatrice is a mythical beast, which Wikipedia tells us is a two-legged dragon with a rooster's head. I'll get a little deeper into this in a minute, but first let's look at the etymology.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary,  the word means a fabulous monster. It comes to us by way of Old French cocatriz, which leads back to the Late Latin calcatrix, which in turn comes from the Latin calcare "to tread.". This is a translation of the Greek word ikhneumon, which means "tracker" or "tracer." The dictionary goes on to tell us that this fabulous beast was said to kill with a glance and that it could be killed only by tricking it into gazing at its own reflection. 

It then leads on to this wonderful paragraph, which I will quote in full:

In classical writings, 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).

from the Biodiversity Heritage Library

To choose just a few favorite things from that paragraph, I am amused by the idea that the sense of this creature becomes hopelessly confused over time, so that it is associated with the basalisk; that simply because of its name it comes to be thought of as some mutant being from a cock's egg; and that  it is thought to be  the mortal enemy of the crocodile, but also, well, the crocodile itself. Oh, yes--and let's not forget the gratuitous insult to women thrown in at the end. (no blame to the etymologist intended.) Let me just say that if there is a way to turn a word into some kind of slam against women, it will eventually be done. But let's move on.

On reflection, I really must refer us back to the corkindrill post above, because I seem to have covered all this hazy crocodile reference before!

I have to confess that I have always thought that a basalisk was some kind of building, no doubt mixing it up with a basilica, except that if I'd been quizzed on it, I would have pictured it as a kind of tower. But no. Here is a drawing, which may or may not be representative of basalisks as a whole:

Ulisse Aldrovandi

If you've become intrigued with the cockatrice, I will refer you to a marvelous essay which I stumbled on through the Wikipedia post: "The Career of the Cockatrice" by Laurence A. Breiner. You can read it here, at JSTOR. Don't be put off by the whole members only vibe, because if you look closely you'll see that there is an independent researcher's button, where you can access 100 articles a month or free, which is probably about 98 more than I will often need. Let me entice you with the opening sentence.

The cockatrice, which no one ever saw, was born by accident toward the end of the twelfth century and died in the middle of the seventeenth, a victim of the new science.

The article delves into the cockatrice in heraldry and alchemy and has much more to say about it than I have either the acumen or the space to consider. But I can leave you with an image of its use in heraldry which I've come across. Ladies and gents, I give you the Arms of Bogan of Totnes, Devon:

Talos

 This one came to me in the form a crossword puzzle clue: "ancient Greek robot." It was recent, so maybe some of you have come across it too. Although no expert, I have read or at least read about a fair number of the ancient Greek classics,  so I was pleasantly surprised to discover a new character. And for some reason, the idea that the ancient Greeks were as fascinated by robots as we are charmed me. Although I suppose I should have gathered that from the Trojan horse. Which, of course, was Greek.

Talos, armed with a stone

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Talos:

In Greek mythology, Talos, also spelled Talus or Talon was a giant automaton made of bronze to protect Europa in Crete from pirates and invaders. He circled the island's shores three times daily.

But apparently there was more than one theory about who or what Talos was. The one above has Zeus asking the god Hephaestus, who was the god of fire and metalwork among other things, to make this metal man. But in other versions he is a descendent from the race of brass people. I found this relevant passage in Hesiod's Works and Days. Hesiod tells us that the gods made different races of men in rapidly declining order of excellence, starting with gold, silver and then bronze (humans coming decidedly further down the scale).

Hesiod--or someone's idea of him anyway

Then Zeus the father made yet a third race of men, the bronze, not like the silver in anything. Out of ash-trees he made them, a terrible and fierce race, occupied with the woeful works of Ares and with acts of violence, no eaters of corn, their stern hearts being of adamant; unshapen hulks, with great strength and indescribable arms growing from their shoulders above their stalwart bodies. They had bronze armour, bronze houses, and with bronze they laboured, as dark iron was not available. They were laid low by their own hands, and they went to chill Hades house of decay leaving no names: mighty though they were, dark death got them, and they left the bright sunlight.

                                                                                --translated by M. L. West

Or he may have been a brass bull. Which I have just learned was a well documented instrument of ancient Greek torture. But we're not going there today.

There are a couple of things that fascinated me about the story of Talos. One is that even this early version of a robot was described as having human emotions, and as you will see below, his desires proved his undoing, a very human failing. 

The other thing that seems to persist through many versions of his story is that he was fueled by one vein, which ran up and down his body and was full of ichor. What is ichor, you ask? It is the celestial blood of the gods. I have always pronounced it as ICK-or when I've come across it, which made it sound disgusting, but apparently it's more like EYE-core (American English) or EYE-cur (British English), either of which is much more palatable. 

As I sought out usable images I came across a strange one. It is of a statue found on Guildhall Street behind the Lion Yard Centre in Cambridge, England. . It was sculpted by Michael Ayrton and it was posted on a blog called "Art in Cambridge" by a woman named Nina Lübben. Her post contains more photos of this statue and others by the sculptor. Here's a link. And here's a little quote I found from the sculptor himself within it:

A certain tranquillity lies in his stupid presence, a certain comfort.  He has no brains and no arms, but looks very powerful.

Talos, by Michael Ayrton

The article asks if this is the ugliest statue in Cambridge, but I find it rather poignant.

It turns out that Talos, or at least someone called Talos has made his way into modern culture even if I've personally been ignorant of this. (What else is new? It's the name of the blog, people.) There is a very impressive Talos (for its time) in the 1963 movie Jason and the Argonauts.

And the gaming world is familiar with at least the name Talos, as he is a god in the game The Elder Scrolls/Skyrim, though not a bronze automaton. But there is a newer entry in the gaming universe, The Talos Principal, which seems quite germane. According to Wikipedia:

The game features a philosophical storyline. The name of the game refers to a philosophical principle formulated by a fictional Greek philosopher known as Straton of Stageira. In texts found in the game, Straton argues that the consciousness of Talos of Greek mythology (a mechanical yet conscious man) implies that humans are also merely machines (albeit biological ones). 

And of course I can't forget to mention that Talos has even made his way into the world of TED Talks in the form of this very charming very short animated film by Adrienne Mayor, The Greek Myth of Talos, the First Robot.

 

And now that you've watched the film and know the end of the story, what better way to finish this off but with the death of Talos on an ancient Grecian vase?

The Death of Talos

hackneyed

 I put the word "hackneyed" on my long backlist of words to look into in April 2021, so it seems high time to bring it out of the dusty corner where it's been lingering. I don't remember why it sprang out to me at the time, and I don't know why I've picked it as the one with which to renew investigations here now.

I know what "hackneyed" means, or at least think I do. It means worn-out, trite, commonplace. Unoriginal.Passé. But where does it come from? Does it have any relationship to hackney cabs, and if so, what could that possibly be?

Well, we must start off with a controversy.  According to the website World Wide Words, the editors of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary were quite sure that the word "hackney" derived from the French  haquenée, which meant and still means "an ambling horse." However, modern writers are just as certain that the French actually derives from an English placename, namely Hackney, England. 

Hackney Downs

A hakeney (Middle English) was a horse raised for riding --or ambling-- as opposed to being raised as  a warhorse or those used for hunting and racing. (You can see why these perfectly fine animals might seem a little, well, commonplace by comparison.) The countryside around Hackney was apparently ideal for raising horses (see the remnant of the landscape above) and it seems that the town of Hackney developed a nice little trade hiring out of these beasts. The 'to hire' aspect began that kind of drift that language is wont to do, so that the word expanded its meaning to include other beings who could be hired--like servants. And prostitutes. I think we can all see that any of these hired out beings might become tired out and overused. Which I'm guessing is the real link to our modern term "hackneyed."

Hackney carriage, Gibraltar Museum

With this mystery (perhaps) solved, let's move on. For the word "hackney" also kept its associations with horses. According to Wikipedia, the first private coaches were used by the aristocracy in the 1580s. It didn't take long for the general public to emulate the upper classes and the first horse powered hackney cabs and carriages came along in the 1600s.

But even as horse drawn carriages began to be replaced by motorized cabs, the term "hackney" stayed with them, even though the horses didn't. 

a modern hackney carriage

The excellent Grammarphobia blog lays out the evolution of the subsequently shortened term "hack" quite succinctly:

As for the short form “hack,” it evolved similarly. Here are the earliest OED dates for some of its senses: horse for hire (1571), driver of a hackney carriage (1661), hireling (1699), trite writing (1710), trite or dull (1759), journalistic drudge (1798), ride a horse (1800), writer of unoriginal work (1927).

Perhaps inevitably these days, the word "hack" leads us eventually to think of "hacker", and in an interesting piece at Deepgram,  essayist Morris Gevirtz shows us how the term "hack" has had two meanings since its emergence in English, one having to do with horses and one with the physical and often violent act of hacking. He argues that in our contemporary sense of hacking, the two meanings have been reunited again. 

But let's not forget the horses! For the Hackney is also a recognized breed. You can see their distinctive high stepping trot in the photo below. They are often used in harness events. Read all about them in this Wikipedia article.

a Hackney in a driving competion

Well, we've come a long way from Hackney, and even Hackney itself has come a long way from the quiet village where horses once roamed the fields outside it. It was gradually swallowed up by London, and here is an image of it in the present day:

Hackney from the Air--Thomas Nugent

But if you're feeling a little nostalgic for the old Hackney, here's a delightful rendition of "If it Wasn't for the 'Ouses in Between" on YouTube. Wait for it--you'll find a mention of "Ackney Marshes" part way through. 

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