Balderdash for the Medieval Gay #2

(a compendium of queer words for the modern fag with a passion for the Middle Ages added hebdomadally on the Sabbath day)

2.) Alectorian
-noun singular

a.) Cockstone. A Type of stone said to be found in (the gizzards of) poultry; used as a victory charm by an athlete.*

[Origin: Greek alector, cock; marteia, divination]

According to Pliny the Elder, “the name given to a stone that is found in the crop of poultry, like crystal in appearance, and about as large as a bean in size” and which made the athlete Milo of Crotona undefeatable. Pliny does not make clear which part of the cock it is found. In The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus it says “Alectoria…is white as a Crystal, and it is drawn out of the Cock’s gizzard, or maw, after that he hath been gelded more than four years…put under the tongue, it quencheth thirst.” While real Albertus Magnus says that “A capon…after six years a stone named electorius grows in its liver, and from that time onwards the capon does not drink, and therefore a man who wears this stone is said not to get thirsty.”

Alectromancy is a kind of divination by use of a cock. Draw a circle, and write in succession round it the letters of the alphabet, on each of which lay a grain of corn. Then put a cock in the centre of the circle, and watch what grains he eats. The letters will prognosticate the answer. Libanius and Jamblicus thus discovered who was to succeed the emperor Valens. The cock ate the grains over the letters t, h, e, o, d = Theod [orus].

*Cocks and small game were often given as love tokens by the erasti (lover) to the eromenos (beloved) in ancient Greece.  Someone please get me some cock!