Also in mod. dial. cockeldy-, cockelty-. [Origin uncertain: cf. COCKLE v.2, and its derivative cockly, cocklety moving unsteadily to and fro.] In Moulding of cockle (cocklety) bread: see quot. from Aubrey below.
1595. Peele, Old Wives’ Tale, Wks. (Rtldg.), 454/1. Stroke me smooth, and comb my head And thou shalt have some cockell-bread.
1641. Brome, Joviall Crew, II. Wks. 1873, III. 371. That were wont to see my Ghossips … mould Cockle bread; daunce clutterdepouch, and Hannykin booby; binde barrels; or do any thing before him, and he would laugh at us. Ibid. (a. 1652), Covent Garden, IV. i. Wks. II. 69. A great Separatist, that is now writing a book against playing at Barlibreak, moulding of Cocklebread, and such like prophane exercises.
1682. trans. Selden’s Eng. Janus, Author’s Pref. Snotty-nosed Fellows and Clowns, that feed upon cockle bread.
a. 1697. Aubrey, in Thoms, Anecd. & Traditions (1839), 94–5. 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 and their coates with their hands as high as they can, and then they wabble to and fro, as if they were kneading of dowgh, and say these words, viz.
| My dame is sick and gonne to bed, | |
| And I’le go mould my Cockle-bread. |
1847–78. in Halliwell.
Variant forms of the sport and of the rhyme are given in Sheffield Gloss. 1888 (from Hunter) and in Whitby Gloss. 1876 (Bread so kneaded seems to have been actually used as a love-charm. See Thoms, Anecd. & Tradit., 94–6.)
