Cockle Bread. This singular game is thus described by Aubray and Kennett: “Young wenches have a wanton sport which they call ‘moulding of cockle bread,’ viz.: they get upon a table-board, and then gather up their knees as high as they can, and then they wobble to and fro, as if they were kneading of dough, and say these words:
‘My dame is sick, and gone to bed,
And I’ll go mould my cockle bread,
Up with my heels, and down with my head!—
And this is the way to mould cockle bread.’”
—(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 414, article “Cockle Bread.”)
These words “mistley” and “cockledy” were not to be found in any of the lexicons examined, or in the “Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English” of Thomas Wright, M. A., London, 1869, although in the last was the word “mizzly” meaning “mouldy.” It may possibly mean mistletoe.
“Cockle is the unhappy ‘lolium’ of Virgil, thought, if mixed with bread, to produce vertigo and headache; therefore, at Easter, parties are made to pick it out from the wheat. They take with them cake, cider, and toasted cheese. The first person who picks the cockle from the wheat has the first kiss of the maid and the first slice of the cake.”—(Fosbroke, “Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 1040.)
Vallencey describes a very curious ceremony among the Irish in the month of September. “On the eve of the full moon of September ... straw is burnt to embers, and in the embers each swain in turn hides a grain, crying out, ‘I’ll tear you to pieces if you find my grain.’ His maiden lover seeks, and great is her chagrin if she does not find it. On producing it, she is saluted by the company with shouts; her lover lays her first on her back, and draws her by the heels through the embers, then turning her on her face repeats the ceremony until her nudities are much scorched. This is called posadamin, or the meal-wedding.... When all the maidens have gone through this ceremony, they sit down and devour the roasted wheat, with which they are sometimes inebriated.”—(“De Rebus Hibernicis,” vol. ii. p. 559.)