COCKNEY. (Vol. iv., pp. 273. 318.)

The following passages collected from various sources, will perhaps help to illustrate the origin and the several meanings of this word Cockney:—

Fuller's first sense is—

"One coaks'd or cockered, made a wanton or nestle-cock of, delicately bred and brought up, so that when grown men or women they can endure no hardship, nor comport with pains taking."

"'Tis not their fault, but our mothers', our cockering mothers, who for their labour make us to be called Cockneys ."—Dekker, A Knight's Conjuring, 1607.

"And when this jape is told another day I shall be halden a daffe or a Cokenay."

Chaucer, The Reve's Tale.

The following extracts will show that to this first sense Fuller might have added, one abundantly and daintily fed:—

"Unlesse it be shortly considered, and that faukons be broughte toa more homelye diete, it is ryght likely, that within a shorte space of yeares, our familiar pultry shall be as scarse, as be now partriche and fesaunte. I speake not this in disprayse of the faukons, but of them whiche keepeth them lyke Cokeneys ."—Elyot, The Governour, 1557.

"Some again are in the other extreme, and draw this mischief on their heads by too ceremonious and strict diet, being over precise cockney-like, and curious in their observation of meats."—Burton. Anatomy of Melancholy.

Fuller's second sense is—

"One utterly ignorant of husbandry and huswifery such as is practised in the country, so that he may be easily persuaded anything about rural commodities, and the original thereof."

He relates the old cock-neigh story, and adds another jest of a similar kind:

"One merrily persuaded a she-citizen, that seeing malt did not grow, the good huswives in the country did spin it; 'I knew as much,' said the Cockney, 'for one may see the threads hang out at the ends thereof."

Shakspeare uses the word Cockney in this latter sense in King Lear, Act II. Sc. 4.:

"Lear. Oh me, my heart, my rising heart! But down."

"Fool. Cry to it, nuncle, as the Cockney did to the eels, when she put 'em i' th' paste alive; she knapt 'em o' th' coxcombs with a stick, and cried 'Down, wantons, down;' 'twas her brother, that in pure kindness to his horse buttered his hay."

Cokeney was apparently used in very early times to designate London. In the Britannia, art. "Suffolk," Hugh Bigod, a rebellious baron in the time of Henry II., boasts thus:

"Were I in my castle of Bungey,

Upon the river Waveney,

I would ne care for the King of Cockeney."

I conceive that Cokeney in this sense is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word cycene, a kitchen or cooking place. Nares, however, in his Glossary, says:

"Le pais de cocagne, in French, means a country of good cheer; in old French coquaine; cocagna, in Italian, has the same meaning. Both might be derived from coquina. This famous country, if it could be found, is described as a region 'where the hills were made of sugar-candy, and the loaves ran down the hills, crying 'Come eat me, come eat me.'"

Hickes gives, in his Anglo-Saxon Grammar, an ancient poem, describing the plenteous land of Cokeney or Cokaigne:

"Fur in see hi west Spaynge

Is a lond ihote Cocaygne

Ther nis lond under hevenriche

Of wel of goodnis hit iliche

In Cokaygne is met and drink

Withute care, how, and swink

.......

Ther nis lac of met no cloth

.......

Ther beth rivers gret and fine

Of oile, melk, honi and wine.

Water seruith ther to nothing

Bot to siyt and to waussing.

.......

Ther is a wel fair abbei

Of white monkes and of grei

.......

The gees irostid on the spitte

Fleey to that abbai, god hit wot,

And gredith 'gees al hote, al hot.'"

Shakspeare's use of Cockney, in Twelfth Night, Act IV. Sc. 1., is somewhat obscure; but I conceive that the Clown means to express his opinion that the world is already replete with folly:

"Seb. I prithee vent thy folly somewhere else; thou know'st not me.

"Clown. Vent my folly! He has heard that word of some great man, and now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I am afraid this great lubber, the world, will prove a Cockney."

The Clown probably intends to say, that to vent his folly to the world will be like sending coals to Newcastle, or provisions to Cocagne; for that, as regards folly, this great lubber the world will prove to be a Cocagne or Cokeney, i.e. a land of plenty. He may, however, mean to hint, in a round-about way, that Cockneys, or natives of London, are full of folly; or that the world is as well supplied with folly as a Cockney is with food.

I do not know whether I committed a Cockney, a clerical, or acanonical error, when I wrote the name of Chaucer under the following lines instead of the word Cokeney:—

"I have no peny, quod Pierce, polettes for to bie,

Ne neither gose ne grys, but two grene cheses,

A few curdes and creame, and an haver cake,

And two loves of beanes and branne, bake for mi folke,

And yet I say by my soule, I have no salt bacon

Ne no Cokeney, by Christe, coloppes to make."

The Vision of Pierce Plowman, printed 1550.

"At that fest thay wer seruyd with a ryche aray,

Every fyve and fyve had a Cokenay."

The Turnament of Tottenham.

The sentence for which I am responsible, p. 318., should read thus: "Cokeney, in the above lines quoted by Webster, probably refers to any substantial dish of fresh meat which might be cut in collops." I may add that this use of the word brings it into close alliance with the Anglo-Saxon word cocnunga, signifying things cooked, pies, puddings, and cock's-meat.

The French and Neapolitan festivals, called cocagne and cocagna, appear to have presented themselves in this country under the form of Cockneys' feasts and revels conducted by the King of Cockneys. Strype, in the first appendix to his edition of Stow's London, under the head "Stepney," describes at some length "The Cockney's Feast of Stepney;" and Dugdale, in his Origines Juridiciales, recapitulates an order entered on the Register of Lincoln's Inn, vol. iv. fo. 81a, in the 9th of Henry VIII.:

"That the King of Cockneys in Childermass-day should sit and have due service, and that he and all his officers should use honest and lawful manner and good order, without any waste of destruction making, in wine, brawn, chely, or other victuals: as also that he, his marshal, butler, and constable marshal, should have their lawful and honest commandments by delivery of the officers of Christmas: and that the said King of Cockneys, ne none of his officers, medyll neither in the buttry nor in the Stuard of Christmass his office—upon pain of xi s. for every such medling. And lastly, that Jack Straw and all his adherents should be thenceforth utterly banisht, and no more to be used in this house upon pain to forfeit, for every time five pounds, to be levied on every fellow hapning to offend against this rule."

Some obliging bencher of Lincoln's Inn will perhaps have the goodness to examine, or to permit me to examine the Register, to ascertain whether this potentate was king of Cockneys, as Dugdale has it, or of Cockney.

A LONDONER.