{{Short description|British corn or wheat bread}} {{distinguish|Cocket bread}} {{Infobox food | name = Cockle bread | image = | caption = | alternate_name = | country = [[England]] | region = | creator = | course = | type = [[Bread]] | served = | main_ingredient = [[Cornmeal|corn]] or [[wheat flour]] | minor_ingredient = [[Agrostemma githago|Cockle weed]] | variations = | calories = | other = |no_recipes=true |no_commons=true }} '''Cockle bread''' was an inferior type of British corn or wheat bread mixed with "[[Agrostemma githago|cockle weed]]". In the 17th century a practice known as "moulding" cockle-bread had a sexual connotation. Cockle bread is also mentioned in a 19th-century nursery rhyme.
==Cockle weed bread== The play ''[[The Old Wives' Tale (play)|The Old Wives' Tale]]'' by [[George Peele]], first published in 1595, has a reference to "cockle-bread". The editor of a 20th-century edition of the play, Charles Whitworth, points to the "[[Agrostemma githago|cockle]]" as a weed found in corn and wheat fields, and suggests that "cockle-bread" was possibly an inferior bread, made from those grains, with the weed mixed into it.<ref name="Peele2014">{{cite book|author=George Peele|title=The Old Wife's Tale|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iS2hAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA38|date=18 June 2014|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-1-4081-4462-6|page=38}}</ref> [[William Carew Hazlitt]] writing in ''Faith and Folklore: a dictionary'' in 1905, gives the same explanation of "Cockle Bread" as Whitworth.<ref name="Hazlitt">{{cite book |last=Hazlitt |first1=William Carew |authorlink=William Carew Hazlitt |url=https://archive.org/stream/popularantiquit01branuoft#page/330/mode/2up |title=Faith and Folklore: a dictionary of national beliefs, superstitions and popular customs, past and current, with their classical and foreign analogues, described and illustrated |location=London |publisher=Reeves and Turner |year=1905 |pages=331–332 |accessdate=2014-09-19 }}</ref>
==The "moulding" of cocklebread== In the 17th century, a sexual connotation is attached not to the bread itself but to "a dance that involved revealing the buttocks and simulating sexual activity"; this activity was known as "moulding" cockle bread.<ref name="Brome2014">{{cite book|author=Richard Brome|title=A Jovial Crew|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KQK2AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA122 |date=25 June 2014|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-1-4081-4013-0|page=122}}</ref>
[[John Aubrey]] writes of "young wenches" indulging in a "wanton sport" called "moulding of Cocklebread" where they would "get upon a Tableboard, and as they gather-up their knees and their Coates with their hands as high as they can, and then they wabble to and fro with the Buttocks as if they were kneading of Dough with their Arses".<ref name="Peele2014"/> While doing this, the young women would sing the rhyme: {{quote|<poem>My dame is sick, and gone to bed. And I'll go mould my cocklebread! Up with my heels and down with my head, And this is the way to mould cockle-bread.<ref name="Brand1854">{{cite book |first=John |last=Brand |authorlink=John Brand (antiquarian) |title=Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of Our Vulgar and Provincial Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions|url=https://archive.org/details/popularantiquiti02branuoft|year=1854|publisher=H. G. Bohn.|page=[https://archive.org/details/popularantiquiti02branuoft/page/414 414]}}</ref></poem>}} Aubrey compares this, writing "I did imagine nothing to have been in this but mere wantonness of youth ... but I find in Buchardus's book Methodus Confitendi ... one of the articles of interrogating a young woman is, if she did ever subjugere panem clunibus, and then bake it, and give it to the one she loved to eat".<ref name="Hazlitt"/> From this he decides "I find it to be a relic of natural magic, an unlawful philtrum" (i.e. aphrodisiac or love charm).<ref>A. McLaren, Reproductive Rituals (1984), p. 37</ref><ref name="Hazlitt"/>
Writing in ''A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature'', Gordon Williams sees Aubrey's "wanton sport" in a 1641 mention of moulding cocklebread, a "sexual sense" in a prayer mentioning the practice from 1683, and considers it "transparent" in the 1683 ''Fifteen Real Conforts Of Matrimony'' which "tells how 'Mrs. Betty has been Moulding of Cockle-bread, and her mother discovers it'; the consequence is a 'By-blow in her belly'".<ref name="Williams2001">{{cite book|author=Gordon Williams|title=A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature: Three Volume Set Volume I A-F Volume II G-P Volume III Q-Z|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2XtWDhgljvkC&pg=PA264|date=13 September 2001|publisher=A. & C. Black |isbn=978-0-485-11393-8|pages=264–265}}</ref>
==Nursery rhyme== In the 19th and 20th centuries, Cockle-Bread became the name of a children's game, played to a nursery rhyme in which the bread is mentioned: {{quote|<poem>My granny is sick and now is dead. And we'll go mould some cocklety bread. Up with the heels and down with the head. And that's the way to make cocklety bread.<ref name="SimpsonRoud2000">{{cite book|author1=Jacqueline Simpson|author2=Stephen Roud|title=A Dictionary of English Folklore|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iTcdvd1iRXsC&pg=PT211|year=2000|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-210019-1|page=211}}</ref></poem>}} Writing in ''Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain'' in 1854, [[John Brand (antiquarian)|John Brand]] describes the nursery rhyme as "modern", but adds that its connection to the earlier "moulding" of cockle bread "is by no means generally understood".<ref>{{cite book|first=John |last=Brand |authorlink=John Brand (antiquarian) |title=Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of Our Vulgar and Provincial Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions|url=https://archive.org/details/popularantiquiti02branuoft|year=1854|publisher=H. G. Bohn |pages=[https://archive.org/details/popularantiquiti02branuoft/page/413 413]–414}}</ref>
== See also == * [[Cordax]]
==References== {{reflist|2}}
{{British bread}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cockle Bread}} [[Category:Sexual attraction]] [[Category:British breads]] [[Category:Magic substances]] [[Category:Buttocks]]