Matthew 26:34

Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.

The cock crow refers to the time of the morning in which that event occurs, a time marked not by a single blast from Chanticleer's bugle, but by many crowings of those feathered harbingers of the day. Mark mentioned the cock's crowing twice before the denial, but that is not a difficulty. Matthew often mentioned one where Mark mentioned two; and besides, the cock crow (in a place like Jerusalem was at that time) always began with one or two, then swelled into a mighty chorus of hundreds or even thousands of roosters uniting to produce that phenomenon called simply the cock crow. Efforts of quibblers to limit such an event to initiation by only one or two cocks and to engage a debate on whether it was one or two are ridiculous. Anyone who has ever heard a cock crow (and I don't mean one bird) in a populous place with an abundance of chickens knows exactly what was meant!