Twice ToldHentzy on the Basel cock, Promenade pittoresque dans l'évêché de Bâle (La Haye 1808), pp. 21 to 22
- Language
- French
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 18 October 2026
The passage is an aside in a letter about Basel. The writer has just listed fanciful derivations of the city’s name and turns to the basilisk of the Gerberbrunnen fountain. The book is a travel narrative with plates, not a chronicle, and the tone is joking. The scan used here is the ETH-Bibliothek copy on e-rara. The text runs across a page break; the break is marked in square brackets. “Kohlberg” and “Bâle” are in italics in the print.
puisque l’année 1474, le jeudi avant la Saint Laurent, le magistrat de Bâle fit brûler par le Bourreau au Kohlberg, un pauvre coq accusé d’avoir fait tout-seul un œuf de Basilic. Cet œuf qu’on aurait dû garder précieusement, parmi les raretés de la Bibliothèque, fut brûlé en même temps; par ce que des témoins dignes de foi, affirmèrent avoir vu sortir de pareils œufs, une nombreuse progéniture de petits basilics. Avant de procéder à l’auto da fé, le bourreau ayant ouvert cet épouvantable coq, qui pourrait bien avoir été hermaphrodite, lui trouva encore trois autres œufs, qui couvés à l’Egyptienne, ou selon le procédé de Réaumur, auraient infailliblement produits une nichée redoutable, si elle n’avait pas été étouffée à [p. 22] temps, par la prévoyante sollicitude du magistrat de Bâle.
Translation
since in the year 1474, on the Thursday before St Lawrence’s day, the magistrate of Basel had the executioner burn, on the Kohlberg, a poor cock accused of having laid a basilisk’s egg all by itself. The egg, which ought to have been kept carefully among the rarities of the library, was burned at the same time, because trustworthy witnesses had said they had seen such eggs give out a numerous brood of little basilisks. Before going ahead with the auto-da-fé, the executioner opened this dreadful cock, which may well have been a hermaphrodite, and found three more eggs in it. Hatched the Egyptian way, or by Réaumur’s method, they would surely have produced a fearsome brood, had it not been smothered in time by the farsighted care of the magistrate of Basel.
Notes
The passage is the earliest text we found that has “the magistrate of Basel” act in the story. It says the magistrate “fit brûler” (had the cock burned) and that the cock was “accusé” (accused); it does not use a word for sentence, judgment or trial. It names no source. The day (the Thursday before St Lawrence’s day), the executioner opening the bird and finding three more eggs, and the witnesses who had seen basilisks hatch all match Gross’s passage of 1624 (documents/gross-1624-p120.md) and not Knebel’s diary, which has two further eggs. Hentzy adds the jokes: a library curiosity, a hermaphrodite, Egyptian ovens. “Réaumur’s method” refers to artificial incubation. “Le jeudi avant la Saint Laurent” is rendered “the Thursday before St Lawrence’s day”, as in Gross.
The 1808 text does not contain the words “heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg” that Evans (1906) quotes. Berriat-Saint-Prix (1829, p. 428) lists a “Sentence du magistrat de Bâle” and cites this book through a newspaper of 1813; Evans lists it in his appendix.