A Basilisk in the Well

According to an old legend, unusual in Bohemia and recorded by Krolmus, a poisonous basilisk once lived in the well at the Račiněves farmstead. Anyone it looked at or breathed upon died that very day. People feared its gaze and were most reluctant to fetch water. Later a local villager thought of placing mirrors around the well’s rim at night so that, on seeing itself in the morning, the monster would kill itself with its own poisonous stare.