Also cock a gee, cokaghee, cocko-gee, cockygee. [ad. modern Irish cac a’ ghéidh goose dung, from its greenish-yellow (‘goose turd’) color.] A cider apple formerly in high repute; also, the cider made from it.
In A Treatise on Cyder-making 1753, p. 23 it is said ‘This fruit is of Irish extraction, the name signifying in that language Goose-turd.… Counsellor Pyne, who resided near Exeter, and who had care of Sir William Courtenay’s estates in Ireland, is said to have brought it into England.’
1727. H. Stafford, Cyder-Fruits Devonsh., in Langley, Pomona (1729), 149. I must … mention to you another sort [of cider] which hath not been heard of among us more than six or seven years: The name of it is Cockagee, or Cackagee (for the word, as far as I can learn, is Irish)…. The fruit is originally from Ireland, and the cyder much valued in that country.
1834–47. Southey, Doctor, Interch. xvi. (D.). What in his parlance used to be called stingo or … stire, cokaghee or foxwhelp, a beverage as much better than champagne as it is honester, wholesomer and cheaper.
1842. Horticult. Soc., Fruits, 10. Coccagee.
1862. Ansted, Channel Isl., IV. xxi. (ed. 2), 488. The coccagee carries off the palm for cider.
1889. Duffield, Recoll. Trav. Abroad, 66. It was not a Ribston Pippin, a Foxwhelp, or … much less the delicious Coccagee, or any other respectable Christian apple of my believing childish days.
