Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

The Renwick Cockatrice June 18, 2016

Renwick is a pretty Cumbrian village with one bizarre episode in its past: a duel between a local and a deadly cockatrice in the first decade of the seventeenth century. There are a good many references to this legend in the nineteenth century. But the earliest written version appears as an aside in  Hutchinson’s History of the County of Cumberland, vol. I, 212, in 1794.

All the proprietors pay a prescription in lieu of tithes, except the owner of one estate, who has a total exemption, derived from a circumstance which happened about 200 years ago, almost too ridiculous to be rehearsed or credited. The ancient possessor is said to have slain a noxious cockatrice which the vulgar call a crack-a-christ at this day, as they rehearse the simple fable. There is some record [said to be dated 7th of James I], which the owner of the estate holds to testify his exemption, perhaps in a language or letter not to be understood by the villagers; and which he is too tenacious to suffer to be read by curious visitors.

The square brackets are taken from a note: they give us the date 1610. As to the content…. Put in the simplest possible terms: unnamed family does not pay an ecclesiastical tax because they had been exempted thanks to their ancestor having killed a cockatrice. This right was to be found in a document that the family head refused to show around, leading to the reasonable suspicion that the cockatrice was based on a misunderstanding of the language (was it in Latin?) or the script. Beach finds the idea of confusion very credible because the dialect word for cockatrice is crack-a-christ (note attested only here according to Wright’s Dialect Dictionary). How easy would it be for a rustic owner, illiterate in Latin, reading a tithe exemption to find a word resembling craca (admittedly not a rich field in Latin) and the word Christi (i.e. Christ in the genitive)? His refusal to show others might suggest that he had been later disabused.

Two other points leeched with time into the story. First, that the story was connected with Scale Houses and the Tallantire family. Second, there arose the idea that the cockatrice was actually a large bat. Here, for example, is Gibbon:

The Cumbrian monster is alleged to have been nothing more formidable than a bat of extraordinary size, which terrified the people in the church or the vestry one morning, so that all fled save the clerk, who, valiantly giving battle, succeeded in striking it down with his staff. For this exploit he was rewarded with the exemption mentioned which is still claimed by his successors [99].

Beach prefers the misread Latin… How big can British bats get? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com However, much more interesting is the way that the cockatrice has morphed out of control in local tradition. For example, Mysterious Britain begins its entry on the cockatrice:

In 1733 a cockatrice terrorized Renwick when the church was being demolished. The beast was slain by John Tallantire with a rowan branch.

17-when? a rowan what?

Wikipedia seems to depend on Mysterious Britain

According to local legend, the village was terrorized by a cockatrice in 1733

Geoff Holder in his excellent Paranormal Cumbria (by far the best in the Paranormal series?) has some interesting pages on the question. He notes that John Housman gave the information to Hutchinson. Housman’s own works, including the stultifying A Topographical Description which has nothing in all its 600 pages of any possible interest.

Tacitus from Detritus of Empire, 30 Jun 2016: Firstly the fell beast would have been struck down with a rowan branch.  As in a branch of a rowan tree….this seems pretty straightforward. Regards the size of bats in the UK, perhaps the better question is how frightening a bat might one encounter in the UK?  And the demolishing of a church is just the sort of thing that would put our Chiropteric Chums in a foul mood. I did find this rather creepy albino bat story from Berkshire: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089631/White-bat-shows-night-skies-Britain-extremely-unusual-sighting.html  I think close enough to a supernatural beast as matters to that era… The largest native UK bat is the Noctule, still only a palm full if you were brave enough to hold one. Looks pretty scary, I think after a couple of pints I would call it a Cockatrice. As to really big bats turning up the bat sites I consulted did mention a few (love the term) Vagrant Species, but imagining an African fruit bat turning up in Cumbria would require a serious side trip by costumed men clicking away on coconuts….’ Bruce T on a bat candidate, 30 Jun 2016, One incident occurred early in Britain’s expansion into West Africa, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. All home to large species of fruit and other types of bats. The second incident was just before the British Navy became the preeminent sea power in the world, and was expanding into the subcontinent. Could the two reported “cockatrices” have been escaped curiosities and scientific specimens brought home by explorers, sailors, traders, or colonial officials? Tropical bats, if they reached England in the warm months, could have escaped and been spotted soon afterwards, or found a microclimate that allowed them to obtain food and survive for a season or two. Either way, a large fruit bat swooping around would have scared the bejesus out of the locals. The things can be larger than crows. ‘The Egyptian fruit bat. It’s average wingspan is about a half-meter. The range is what makes it interesting, from the lower third of the Nile Valley up the Levant and along the southern coast of Anatolia. Interestingly, it’s also native to Cyprus. Just the kind of oddity for an English trader in the Levant to bring home for his menagerie. There are a ton of large bats West and East Indies, but the odds of one surviving the long trip in the days of sail would be low. Some of the bats in Australia and New Guinea are huge, but again we have the long trip home. Gibbon’s comment is interesting as he lived when biological specimens of such animals were known as were detailed illustrations of the same. James Cook’s men would have seen large fruit bats being hunted and eaten at nearly every island they called at in the tropical Pacific. They probably ate them, too. As the old saying goes, “When in Tonga…”