The ring-necked snake takes refuge close to dwellings in piles of straw or manure, where there is a warm, damp microclimate, in order to lay eggs. Sometimes, it takes refuge in hen houses. This latter behaviour is the source of one of the legends about the Basilisk.
Sometimes a dragon, sometimes a chicken, Basil can be found in many different guises in legends.
The best known are the Basilisk attacking young Harry Potter and the Basilisk of the Middle Ages, a hideous dragon capable of petrifying its prey with a single glance. If a knight managed to get close enough to it to poke it with his spear, the Basilisk's venom would travel up the spear and kill the knight and his mount. Its passage left scorched vegetation and split rocks. The only way to defend yourself was to use a mirror to reflect the Basilisk's murderous glare back at you.
The Basilisk that interests us is called Coquatrix. Also capable of petrifying its prey, it is thought to be the result of a union between a garter snake and an elderly hen or a cockerel. If the owner of a henhouse discovered some unusual eggs, he would crush them before they were incubated by a cat, which was essential for the Coquatrix to come into the world.
Other legends tell of the Coquatrix, an animal that is half snake, half rooster with bat wings, hatched from an egg laid by an old rooster and incubated by an amphibian. But that's another story....
"When it swims in the waters of Lake Geneva or rests among the rocks or grasses of the shore, our garter snake is far from suspecting the strange powers attributed to it...".
From Chronique du lac by J.-J. Pittard
