The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures: The Ultimate A–Z of Fantastic Beings from Myth and Magic. John Matthews
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of where it could have come from when the colder weather brought it south. The most common legend relates that the bird was hatched from pieces of driftwood on which barnacles clustered. These barnacles were believed to be eggs from which they hatched. Another story says that they should really be called Tree Geese, because they hatch from trees that grow near the sea. As the fruit-like growths hang heavily, so the goose swims away into the sea. If they fall upon land, then they die. The Barnacle goose was the subject of many theological debates when it came to deciding whether it was fit to eat during Lent – the period when no meat is eaten. Clerics persuaded themselves that barnacle geese were really shellfish rather than fowl and so allowable fare for the Lenten period. Later, Christians took the Barnacle goose as a symbol of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, since it was born without procreation being involved. The Barnacle goose was also called Ephemerus.
BAROMETZ
In medieval Europe, the Barometz was thought to be a kind of animal-vegetable being, a native of far eastern parts. Sir John Mandeville’s Travels described it like this:
There grows a kind of fruit like gourds; when they are ripe, men cut them into two and find within them a little beast with flesh, bone and blood, like a new-born lamb without wool.
Legend held that the Barometz was a beast with long roots that allows it to graze in its immediate vicinity, but when its pasture was exhausted, it would die. Then the Barometz would be scavenged by wolves or harvested by men. It was said to taste like crab meat. The fleece was used to weave clothing and its hooves, which were made of hair, could also be woven. Sir Thomas Brown, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646, wrote that:
Much wonder is made of the Boramex, that strange plant-animal…which wolves delight to feed on, which hath the shape of a Lamb, affordeth a bloody juyce upon breaking and liveth while the plant be consumed about it.
Other names of the Barometz are Chinese Lycopodium, Jeduah, Scythian Lamb and Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. Various suggestions have been made about the Barometz’s possible origins: some say it may have been a description of the cotton-plant or the woolly fern (Cibotium barometz) that grows in the Middle East and has been used to stop bleeding. Or it is possible that the legends are based on the then little-understood formation of the mineral travertine which is built up by calcium carbonate deposited through the flow of thermal waters over plant matter. As these deposits build up, so the branch or bush is slowly turned into living stone.
BARONG
In Balinese legend, Barong is a great dragon with protruding eyes. It opposes the plague goddess, Ranga, and keeps disease from the land.
BARUSHKA MATUSHKA
This beautiful horse was the mount of the Russian hero, Ilya Muromets. It is also known as Sivushko or Kosmatushka.
BASADAE
It was said that the tribe of Basadae lived in India. They were men, some with heads of dogs, some with one leg or just one eye, with skins so thick that arrows could not penetrate them. They could speak the language of the animals if they ate the heart and liver of a dragon, and could become invisible at will.
BASAJUAN
Among the Basque people of north-west Spain, the Basajuan is a trickster spirit in the form of a faun who teaches humans agriculture and the smithing of metals. Living high up in the Pyrenean mountains, he protects flocks of grazing goats and sheep. His wife Basa-Andre combs her long hair and calls to climbers in the mountains so that they fall to their deaths.
BASILIC
In French folklore, Basilic was a dragon that haunted the area round the city of Vienne, taking cattle and people. It had a stare that petrified all it looked upon. This state of affairs continued until the brave knight Fretard overcame it, confining it to a well. However, Basilic was said to emerge every 10 years and could only be overcome if someone saw it before it could gaze upon the onlooker. It attempts to rise to the top of the well and if it should succeed in emerging, then things will continue as they were before. This seems to be a local legend related to the Basilisk.
BASILISK
The original Basilisk of classical tradition was a small venomous serpent whose throat never touched the ground, with a crest upon its head that gave it its name. Basileus is the Greek for king, and this ensured that the snake was remembered as the king of all serpents. Everything about the Basilisk was poisonous. Its bite, glance, saliva and smell were all fatal. In addition, it could spit venom at flying birds. The venom of the Basilisk could rot the fruit on trees and pollute water. It was considered to be the cause of the Libyan and Middle Eastern deserts. Pliny described the Basilisk as a snake with white spots or stripes with fiery breath and a death-dealing cry, that had the ability to drive people mad with its poison. The Basilisk shares with Medusa the ability to strike onlookers dead by its glance alone. There were certain strategies that helped protect the traveller during encounters with it: you might carry a crystal globe to reflect back the petrifying stare, you could carry a weasel which can give as good as it gets by way of venomous biting, or you could take a cockerel with you, since its crowing would send the Basilisk into fits.
The magical property of the Basilisk is primarily the power to protect whatever you want kept safe from theft or attack. Many Gnostic seals of the late classical era carry the image of the basilisk in order to ward off evil, in much the same way that military breastplates carry a gorgonian (an image of the Medusa’s head). Because one of the main antidotes to the Basilisk was to carry a cockerel, the creature changed its shape in medieval legend, becoming a serpent with a cockerel’s head, neck and legs, but retaining its serpent tail. Variant forms give it a human face on a cockerel’s head and dragon’s wings. A great brass cannon was named after it in Tudor times in the hope that enemies would be stricken down as fatally as though by the venom of the beast itself. For Christians, the Basilisk was an ultimate symbol of the devil in his form as the one who tempted our first parents, Adam and Eve: beautiful in form and colour but deadly to the human race.
A serpentine Basilisk appears in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, where Harry finally defeats it with the sword brought to him by Fawkes, the Phoenix that lives in Professor Dumble-dore’s study. He pierces the Basilisk in the eye, depriving him of his petrifying stare.
BASKET MONSTER
Among the Zulu, the Basket Monster looks just like an open basket ready to receive contents. One mother laid her baby in such a basket to stop it rolling away while she worked. However, when she turned back to her child, she saw with horror that the basket had grown legs and had scuttled away with the baby, which she never saw again.
BASTET
The Egyptian Bastet was a cat-headed goddess who was worshipped at Bubastis. Her name means ‘the tearer’ or ‘the renderer’. Despite these harsh epithets, Bast or Bastet became less savage and more benign in later belief, transferring her more destructive qualities to Sekhmet with whom she was closely alllied. It was held that Bastet was the spark of rage in the eye of her father, Ra, and the instrument of his vengeance. It was forbidden to hunt lions on her festival day, which was held, according to the lunar calendar, in April or May. Bastet was the mother of Miysis, the lion god known as the ‘Lord of Slaughter’, and also mother of Khensu, the moon god and Mihos, the lion-headed god. Bastet’s myth is connected with the eye of the moon, and her temple, which became the focus for the cat, as it was