In the basement of a tavern in Utrecht there lived a hideous monster that was hatched from a black rooster's egg by a snake.

The scientific name for such a dragon-snake was basiliscus. Since he only continues to live on in folktales and has not shown himself anywhere for ages, people presume that the species has died out now.

The glance of the basiliscus was so venomous that he could kill a man with a blink of the eye and pulverize him into a heap of dust.

Needless to say, the man who found the basilisk in the basement did not survive the adventure.

He went down to fetch a barrel of beer. When he did not return, people thought that he had helped himself to the lager so generously that he was sleeping off his hangover. However, the next person who descended into the basement did not return either. When the impatient innkeeper stuck his head into the stairwell to ask what was keeping the men, he smelled a stench in the basement that convinced him something eerie was going on.

Just in time a monk, who was better acquainted with the supernatural than most of the ordinary guests in the barroom, managed to stop the innkeeper from investigating the matter.

The story of the monster in the basement spread through the town like wildfire and, to his despair, the innkeeper soon found that his clientele decreased.

He promised a large sum of money to the person who would rid him of the monster, but nobody dared to undertake such a precarious adventure.

Then one day a poorly dressed boy entered the tavern who dared to take the challenge.

The only weapon that he carried was a plank, which he clenched against his body as a shield.

The innkeeper thought the boy was a halfwit and tried to stop him, but the boy seemed to be so self-assured that in the end he let him pass.

The boy descended the stairs with the plank against his chest. The monster waited for him in a corner of the subterranean vaulting. As soon as the boy was down in the basement, it crawled towards him. Its eyes spat fire and put the cellar all ablaze. Plumes of smoke rose from its nostrils and spread a horrible stench. The boy tried to hold his breath, and turned the plank around and kept it in front of him.

As soon as he aimed it in the direction of the basilisk, the monster was killed by its own image, and dropped down and was pulverized into a heap of dust.