“Lay by your wimbles,
Your boring for thimbles,
Or using your nimbles,
In diving the pockets,
And sounding the sockets
Of simper-the-cockets.”
Works (by Gifford), vii. 376.
In a note on the latter passage, Whalley quotes from Cotgrave’s Dict.: “Coquine, a beggar-woman, also a cockney, simper de cockit, nice thing.” Gifford (ibid.) remarks, “Cocket was a fine species of bread, as distinguished from common bread; hence, perhaps, the name was given to an overstrained affectation of delicacy. To simper at, or over, a thing, is to touch it as in scorn.” Nares (Gloss. in v.) doubts (justly, I think) the connexion of simper-the-cocket with cocket bread, and explains it, “quasi simpering coquette,” observing, that “one of Cotgrave’s words in rendering ‘coquette’ is cocket.” I may add, that in Gloss. of Prov. and Loc. Words by Grose and Pegge, ed. 1839, is, “Cocket, brisk, apish, pert,” and “Simper, to mince one’s words.”
Page 97. v. 56.
Her huke of Lyncole grene,