To make “Barley bread” (in other districts, “Cockley bread”) this rhyme is used in West Cornwall:—
Mother has called, mother has said,
Make haste home, and make barley bread.
Up with your heels, down with your head,
That is the way to make barley bread.
—Folk-lore Journal, v. 58.
The Westmoreland version is given by Ellis in his edition of Brand as follows:—
My grandy’s seeke,
And like to dee,
And I’ll make her
Some cockelty bread, cockelty bread,
And I’ll make her
Some cockelty bread.
The term “Cockelty” is still heard among our children at play. One of them squats on its haunches with the hands joined beneath the thighs, and being lifted by a couple of others who have hold by the bowed arms, it is swung backwards and forwards and bumped on the ground or against the wall, while continuing the words, “This is the way we make cockelty bread.”—Robinson’s Whitby Glossary, p. 40.
The moulding of “Cocklety-bread” is a sport amongst hoydenish girls not quite extinct. It consists in sitting on the ground, raising the knees and clasping them with the hand, and then using an undulatory motion, as if they were kneading dough.
My granny is sick and now is dead,
And we’ll go mould some cocklety bread;
Up with the heels and down with the head,
And that is the way to make cocklety bread.
—Hunter’s MSS.; Addy’s Sheffield Glossary.
(b) The Times of 1847 contains a curious notice of this game. A witness, whose conduct was impugned as light and unbecoming, is desired to inform the court, in which an action for breach of promise was tried, the meaning of “mounting cockeldy-bread;” and she explains it as “a play among children,” in which one lies down on the floor on her back, rolling backwards and forwards, and repeating the following lines:—