cokeney (A.N.) [134], some kind of meager food, probably a young or small cock, which had little flesh on its bones. This meaning of the word (which has been misunderstood) may be gathered from a comparison of the passage in Piers Ploughman with one in the "Turnament of Tottenham," where the writer intended to satirize the poorness of the fare:—
At that fest were thei servyd in a rich aray,
Every fyve and fyve had a cokeney.
Heywood, in his Proverbs, part i, chap. xi, gives a proverb in which the word is evidently used in the same sense, and appears to be intentionally contrasted with a fat hen:—
—Men say,
He that comth every daie shall have a cocknaie,
He that comth now and then, shall have a fat hen;
But I gat not so muche in comyng seelde when,
As a goode hens fether or a poore egshell.
I think that cokenay in Chaucer is the same word, used metaphorically to signify a person without worth or courage (C. T. 4205):—