Cockeldy bread, mistley cake,
When you do that for our sake.
While one of the party so laid down, the rest sat around; and they laid down and rolled in this manner by turns.
These lines are still retained in the modern nursery-rhyme books, but their connection with the game of “Cockeldy-bread” is by no means generally understood. There was formerly some kind of bread called “cockle-bread,” and cocille-mele is mentioned in a very early MS. quoted in Halliwell’s Dictionary. In Peele’s play of the Old Wives’ Tale, a voice thus speaks from the bottom of a well:—
Gently dip, but not too deep,
For fear you make the golden beard to weep.
Fair maiden, white and red,
Stroke me smooth and comb my head,
And thou shalt have some cockell-bread.
Cockly-jock
A game among boys. Stones are loosely placed one upon another, at which other stones are thrown to knock the pile down.—Dickinson’s Cumberland Glossary.
See “[Castles].”
Cock’s-headling
A game where boys mount over each other’s heads.—Halliwell’s Dictionary.
See “[Cockertie-hooie].”