Every rich man had his bearward, and the royal houses had their “master of the king’s bears.” Both Mary and Elizabeth enjoyed a good baiting, whether of bulls or bears. The Puritans of course were against it, and so far were in advance of the times, but it is a peculiar feature of their opposition that they scarcely ever refer to the cruelty of the sport. Orthodox and somewhat dull Pepys describes in 1666 how he saw some good sports of the bulls tossing the dogs—one into the very boxes. A leading Puritan minister not twenty years later is always found, by his own published diary, to have sent his children to the cock-pit on Shrove-Tuesday to witness the “throwing-at-the-cock,” and he piously prays they may be preserved from harm while away (“Newcome’s Diary,” Cheetham Society’s Publications). Thus it is we find so many “Cockers” and “Cockmans” in the Directory. As for our “Cocks” or “Coxes,” every young gallant who showed determined pluck, or strutted in his gait, or gave himself airs, was nicknamed from the cockpit or barn-door dictionary. No wonder our Directory teems with them, for it would be looked upon in bygone days as a pretty compliment. This is the origin of “cock” in such mediæval pet names as Wilcock, Jeffcock, Batcock and Badcock (Bartholomew), Simcock, Hancock and Handcock (Hans, i.e. Johannes), Bawcock (Baldwin), Pidcock and Peacock (Peter), Philcock, now Philcox, and Adcock or Atcock (Adam). To give my readers a list of the views propounded as to the meaning of this desinence would take too much space. Suffice it to say that nothing has seemed too absurd for those who love “guesses at truth,” without ever guessing right, to advance. Every rustic lusty lad was “Cock,” especially if he had a perky cocky way of his own. And in these names of Philcock or Jeffcock, we simply see the old-fashioned way of hailing Philip or Jeffery as, “Well, Jeff-cock, lad, how art thou?” “Pretty well, Phil-cock, thank’ee.” In the old play, Gammer Gurton’s Needle, Gammer’s servant lad is called simply “Cock,” without the baptismal name being appended at all. It is so in the mediæval poem entitled “Cocke Lorell’s Bote.”
But we have got among the birds again. We must hark back to our four-footed friends. There are no “Donkeys” in the London Directory—probably the only place in the world where they are not to be found. But this may be accounted for, perhaps, because there are no Thistles there either. Nevertheless, had there been an English Directory in the year when Domesday Book was compiled, it would have been otherwise; for, thistles or no thistles, “Roger the Ass” is among the list of tenants under the crown. Here we have been liberal: for we have presented our good thistle-loving friend with no less than three of our baptismal names. In the north of England, where Cuthbert was the favourite appellation for three centuries at least, he is called a Cuddy, that being the pet form of the saintly sobriquet. [141] In more southern regions he is known as Ned or Neddy, from Edward. And north and south alike, Jack-ass is familiar to all. It is curious to notice how a name that has become opprobrious can be dropped. “Rascal” was one of our commonest surnames while the term only meant a lean, ragged deer; but when it was passed on to a herd of worthless folk the surname disappeared. One of the latest was Robert Rascal, who, according to Foxe, was persecuted for his religion in 1517.
I must not omit the mention of one or two of our household favourites. There are five Catts in our London Directory, entered in old days as Adam le Kat, or Milo le Chat. In the reign of Richard the Third, there was a rhyme to this effect:—
“The Rat, the Cat, and Lovel the Dog,
Rule all England under the Hog.”
The Hog was the king, Rat was Ratcliffe, and Cat, Catesby. It is not often we hear of cat, dog, and rat, uniting together to worry others, and not one another! If I recal my history correctly, however, they did fall out in the end.
There must have been something sleek and smooth, if not stealthy, about the progenitor of our friends the Catts, I fear. But if our mouse-loving friends gave us their appellation, we were bountiful in return. For three hundred years the most familiar term for a cat was “Gib,” from Gilbert. Hamlet says:—
“For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide?”
And in Peele’s “Edward the First,” the Novice says to the Friar:—
“Now, master, as I am true wag,
I will be neither late nor lag,
But go and come with gossip’s cheer
Ere Gib, our cat, can lick her ear.”
That Gib was short for Gilbert, our Gibbs, Gibsons, Gibbins, and Gibbons can prove. But “Gib” for a cat is obsolete, I fear; and now we speak of a Tom-cat. A female cat was called a Tib-cat, or Tibert, from Tibb, or Tibot, pet forms of Theobalda, which at one period as Tibota was our commonest girl’s name. In “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” one of our very earliest dramatic plays, Dicon (Richard) says:—