“Come hither, Cock: what, Cock, I say.
Cock.How, Gammer?
Gammer. Go, hie thee soon: and grope behind the old brass pan.”
Such terms as nescock, meacock, dawcock, pillicock, or lobcock may be compounds—unless they owe their origin to “cockeney,” a spoiled, home-cherished lad. In “Wit without Money” Valentine says—
“For then you are meacocks, fools, and miserable.”
In “Appius and Virginia” (1563) Mausipula says (Act i. sc. 1)—
“My lady’s great business belike is at end,
When you, goodman dawcock, lust for to wend.”
“Pillicock sat on pillicock-hill”
seems an earlier rendering of the nursery rhyme—
“Pillicock, Pillicock sate on a hill,
If he’s not gone, he sits there still.”
In “Wily Beguiled” Will Cricket says to Churms—