times celebrated in indigenous songs: one verse only of one of them we happen to remember :—

"At Scales, great Tom Barwise gat the ba' in his hand,
And t' wives aw ran out, and shouted, and bann'd :

Tom Cowan then pulch'd and flang him 'mang t' whins,
And he bledder'd, Od-white-te, tou's broken my shins.

"One cannot but feel a more than ordinary curiosity to be able to trace the origin of this improvement on the Romish Saturnalia; and which also appears pretty evidently to be the basis of the institution of the Terra filius in Oxford, now likewise become obsolete; but we are lost in a wilderness of conjectures: and as we have nothing that is satisfactory to ourselves to offer, we will not uselessly bewilder our readers."

Part of the income of the head master and usher of the Grammar School at Lancaster arises from a gratuity called a Cock-penny, paid at Shrove-tide by the scholars, who are sons of freemen. Of this money the head master has seventwelfths, the usher five-twelfths. It is also paid at the schools at Hawkshead and Clithero, in Lancashire; and was paid at Burnley till lately, and at Whiteham and Millom, in Cumberland, near Bootle.

[There is a schoolboy's rhyme, used in a game not uncommon in some parts of Yorkshire, which may possibly have some reference to this practice,

A nick and a nock,

A hen and a cock,

And a penny for my master.]

THROWING AT COCKS.

The unknown but humane writer of a pamphlet entitled Clemency to Brutes, 1761, after some forcible exhortations against the use of this cruel diversion, in which there is a shocking abuse of time, ("an abuse so much the more shocking as it is shewn in tormenting that very creature which seems by nature intended for our remembrancer to improve it: the creature whose voice, like a trumpet, summoneth man forth to his labour in the morning, and admonisheth him of the flight of his most precious hours throughout the day,") has the following observation :-" Whence it had its

rise among us I could never yet learn to my satisfaction; but the common account of it is, that the crowing of a cock prevented our Saxon ancestors from massacreing their conquerors, another part of our ancestors, the Danes, on the morning of a Shrove Tuesday, whilst asleep in their beds." In an old jest-book entitled Ingenii Fructus, or the Cambridge Jests, &c., by W. B., Lond. printed for D. Pratt, corner of Church-lane, Strand, no date, 12mo, is given what is called the original of "the throwing at cocks on ShroveTuesday," in which the rise of this custom is traced up to an unlucky discovery of an adulterous amour by the crowing of a cock. This account, I scarce need observe, is too ridiculous to merit a serious confutation.

In the pamphlet just cited, Clemency to Brutes, is the following passage: "As Christians, consider how very ill the pastime we are dissuading from agrees with the season, and of how much more suitable an use the victims of that pastime might be made to us. On the day following its tumultuous and bloody anniversary, our church enters upon a long course of humiliation and fasting and surely an eve of riot and carnage is a most unfit preparative for such a course. Surely it would be infinitely more becoming us to make the same use of the cock at this season which St. Peter once made of it. Having denied his master, when it crew he wept." The author adds, though by mistake, "no other nation under heaven, I believe, practises it but our own." In the British Apollo, 1708, vol. i. No. 4, is the following query: "How old, and from whence is the custom of throwing at cocks on Shrove Tuesday? A. There are several different opinions concerning the original of this custom, but we are most inclined to give credit to one Cranenstein, an old German author, who, speaking of the customs observed by the Christian nations, gives us the following account of the original institution of the ceremony: When the Danes were masters of England, and lorded it over the nations of the island, the inhabitants of a certain great city, grown weary of their slavery, had formed a secret conspiracy to murder their masters in one bloody night, and twelve men had undertaken to enter the town by a stratagem, and seizing the arms, surprise the guard which kept it; and at which time their fellows, upon a signal given, were to

come out of their houses and murder all opposers: but when they were putting it in execution, the unusual crowing and fluttering of the cocks, about the place they attempted to enter at, discovered their design; upon which the Danes be came so enraged that they doubled their cruelty, and used them with more severity than ever. Soon after they were forced from the Danish yoak, and to revenge themselves on the cocks, for the misfortune they involved them in, instituted this custom of knocking them on the head on Shrove Tuesday, the day on which it happened. This sport, tho' at first only practised in one city, in process of time became a natural divertisement, and has continued ever since the Danes first lost this island."

In the Gentleman's Journal, or the Monthly Miscellany, for January 1692-3, is given an English epigram, "On a cock at Rochester," by Sir Charles Sedley, wherein occur the following lines, which imply, as it should seem, as if the cock suffered this unusual barbarity by way of punishment for St. Peter's crime in denying his lord and master :

"May'st thou be punish'd for St. Peter's crime,

And on Shrove Tuesday perish in thy prime."

A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. liii. July, 1783, p. 578, says, "The barbarous practice of throwing at a cock tied to a stake at Shrovetide, I think I have read has an allusion to the indignities offered by the Jews to the Saviour of the world before his crucifixion." In the preface to Hearne's edition of Thomas Otterbourne, p. 66, he tells us that this custom of throwing at cocks must be traced to the time of King Henry the Fifth, and our victories then gained over the French, whose name in Latin is synonymous with that of a cock; and that our brave countrymen hinted by it that they could as easily, at any time, overthrow the Gallic armies as they could knock down the cocks on Shrove Tuesday. To those who are satisfied with Hearne's explanation of the custom we must object that, from the very best authorities, it appears also to have been practised in France, and that, too, long before the reign of our Henry the Fifth.

A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. vii. Jan. 1737, p. 7, says, (I think very erroneously,) that the "inhabitants of London, by way of reproach for imitating the French in

their modes and fashions, were named Cockneys, (turning upon the thought of a cock signifying a Frenchman,) i. e. apes and mimics of France."

With regard to the word Cockney, my learned friend Mr.
Douce is of opinion, that perhaps after all that has been said
with respect to the origin and meaning of this word, it is
nothing more than a term of fondness or affection used to-
wards male children, (in London more particularly,) in the
same manner as Pigsnie is used to a woman. The latter
word is very ancient in our tongue, and occurs in Chaucer:
"She was a primerole, a piggesnie,

For anie Lord to liggen in his bedde,
Or yet for any good yeman to wedde."

Cant. Tales, i. 3267.

The Romans used Oculus in the like sense, and perhaps Pigsnie, in the vulgar language, only means Ocellus, the eyes of that creature being remarkably small. Congreve, in his Old Batchelor, makes Fondle-wife call his mate "Cockey." Burd and Bird are also used in the same sense. Shadwell not only uses the word Pigsney in this sense, but also Birdsney. See his Plays, i. 357, iii. 385. The learned Hickes, in his Gram. Anglo.-Sax. Ling. Vett. Septentr. Thes. i. 231, gives the following derivation of Cockney: "Nunc Coquin, Coquine, quæ olim apud Gallos otio, gulæ et ventri deditos ignavum, ignavam, desidiosum, deidiosam, segnem significabant. Hinc urbanos, utpote a rusticis laboribus, ad vitam sedentariam et quasi desidiosam avocatos pagani nostri olim Cokaignes, quod nunc scribitur Cockneys, vocabant. Et poeta hic noster in monachos et moniales, ut segne genus hominum, qui desidiæ dediti, ventri indulgebant et coquinæ amatores erant, malevolentissimè invehitur; monasteria et monasticam vitam in Descriptione Terræ Cokaineæ parabolice perstringens." See also Tyrwhitt's observations on this word in his Chaucer, ed. 1775, iv. 253, C. Tales, 4206; Reed's Old Plays, v. 83, xi. 306, 307; Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, ii. 151

The sense of the word Cockney seems afterwards to have degenerated into an effeminate person. Buttes, in his Dyets Dry Dinner, Lond. 1599, c. 2, says, "A Cochni is inverted, being as much as incoct, unripe;" but little stress can be laid upon our author's etymology. In the Workes of John

Heiwood, newly imprinted, 1598, is the following curious

He that comth every day, shall have a Cocknay,

He that comth now and then, shall have a fat hen."1

Carpentier, under the year 1355, mentions a petition of the scholars to the masters of the school of Ramera, to give them a cock, which they asserted the said master owed them upon Shrove Tuesday, to throw sticks at, according to the usual custom, for their sport and entertainment.2

Among the games represented in the margin of the "Roman d'Alexandre," preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, is a drawing of two boys carrying a third on a stick thrust between his legs, who holds a cock in his hands. They are followed by another boy, with a flag or standard emblazoned with a cudgel. Mr. Strutt has engraved the group in his Sports and Pastimes, pl. 35. He supposes, p. 293, that it represents a boyish triumph: the hero of the party having either won the cock, or his bird escaped unhurt from the dangers to which he had been exposed.3

This sport, now almost entirely forgotten among us, we wish consigned to eternal oblivion; an amusement fit only for the bloodiest savages, and not for humanised men, much

[Brand has fallen somewhat into confusion here, the word Cockney having several distinct meanings. See a full account of them in Halliwell's Dictionary, p. 261.]

2 In Carpentier's Glossary, under the words "Gallorum pugna," a.D. 1458, some differences are mentioned as subsisting between the mayor and aldermen of Abbeville, and the dean and chapter of the church of St. Ulfra, which are made up on the following condition; "C'est assavoir que lesdiz Doyen et Cappitle accordent que doresenavant ilz souffreront et consentiront, que cellui qui demourra roy d' l'escolle la nuit des Quaresmiaulx, apporte ou fache apporter devers le Maieur de laditte Ville ou Camp S. George, le Cocq, qui demourra ledit jour ou autre jour victorieux, ou autre cocq; et que ledit roy presente au dit maieur pour d'icellus faire le cholle en la maniere accoutumée. Quæ ultima verba explicant Lit. remiss. an. 1355, in Reg. 84, ch. 278. " Petierunt a magistro Erardo Maquart magistro scholarum ejusdem villæ de Rameru quatenus liberaret et traderet eis unum gallum, quem, sicut dicebant, idem magister scholarum debebat eis die ipsa (Carniprivii) ut jacerent baculos ad gallum ipsum, more solito, pro eorum exhillaratione et ludo."

3 The date of the illumination is not 1433, as Mr. Strutt mentions, but 1343. See the MS. Bodl. 264.