LITMIR.BIZ

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kitchen malkin pins

      Her richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck,

      Clambering the walls to eye him.”

“Coriolanus,” Act ii. sc. 1.

      While the author of the “Anatomy of Melancholy” is still more unkind, for he says —

      “A filthy knave, a deformed quean, a crooked carcass, a maukin, a witch, a rotten post, a hedge-stake may be so set out and tricked up, that it shall make a fair show, as much enamour as the rest.” – Part iii. sect. 2, mem. 2, sub-sect. 3.

      From a drab Malkin became a scarecrow. Hence Chaucer talks of “malkin-trash.” As if this were not enough, malkin became the baker’s clout to clean ovens with. Thus, as Jack took the name of the implements Jack used, as in boot-jack, so by easy transitions Malkin. The last hit was when Grimalkin (that is, grey-malkin) came to be the cant term for an old worn-out quean cat. Hence the witch’s name in “Macbeth.”

      It will be seen at a glance why Malkin is the only name of this class that has no place among our surnames.7 She had lost character. I have suggested, in “English Surnames,” that Makin, Meakin, and Makinson owe their origin to either Mary or Maud. I would retract that supposition. There can be little doubt these are patronymics of Matthew, just as is Maycock or Meacock. Maykinus Lappyng occurs in “Materials for a History of Henry VII.,” and the Maykina Parmunter of the Hundred Rolls is probably but a feminine form. The masculine name was often turned into a feminine, but I have never seen an instance of the reverse order.

      Terminations in kin were slightly going down in popular estimation, when the Hebrew invasion made a clean sweep of them. They found shelter in Wales, however, and our directories preserve in their list of surnames their memorial for ever.8

(b) Cock

      The term “cock” implied pertness: especially the pertness of lusty and swaggering youth. To cock up the eye, or the hat, or the tail, a haycock in a field, a cock-robin in the wood, and a cock-horse in the nursery, all had the same relationship of meaning – brisk action, pert demonstrativeness. The barn-door cockerel was not more cockapert than the boy in the scullery that opened upon the yard where both strutted. Hence any lusty lad was “Cock,” while such fuller titles as Jeff-cock, or Sim-cock, or Bat-cock gave him a preciser individuality. The story of “Cocke Lorelle” is a relic of this; while the prentice lad in “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” acted at Christ College, Cambridge, in 1566, goes by the only name of “Cock.” Tib the servant wench says to Hodge, after the needle is gone —

      “My Gammer is so out of course, and frantic all at once,

      That Cock our boy, and I, poor wench, have felt it on our bones.”

      By-and-by Gammer calls the lad to search:

      “Come hither, Cock: what, Cock, I say.

      Cock.How, Gammer?

      Gammer. Go, hie thee soon: and grope behind the old brass pan.”

      Such terms as nescock, meacock, dawcock, pillicock, or lobcock may be compounds – unless they owe their origin to “cockeney,” a spoiled, home-cherished lad. In “Wit without Money” Valentine says —

      “For then you are meacocks, fools, and miserable.”

      In “Appius and Virginia” (1563) Mausipula says (Act i. sc. 1) —

      “My lady’s great business belike is at end,

      When you, goodman dawcock, lust for to wend.”

      In “King Lear”

      “Pillicock sat on pillicock-hill”

      seems an earlier rendering of the nursery rhyme —

      “Pillicock, Pillicock sate on a hill,

      If he’s not gone, he sits there still.”

      In “Wily Beguiled” Will Cricket says to Churms —

      “Why, since you were bumbasted that your lubberly legs would not carry your lobcock body.”

      These words have their value in proving how familiarly the term cock was employed in forming nicknames. That it should similarly be appended to baptismal names, especially the nick form of Sim, Will, or Jeff, can therefore present no difficulty.

      Cock was almost as common as “kin” as a desinence. Sim-cock was Simcock to the end of his days, of course, if his individuality had come to be known by the name.

      “Hamme, son of Adecock, held 29 acres of land.

      “Mokock de la Lowe, for 10 acres.

      “Mokock dal Moreclough, for six acres.

      “Dik, son of Mocock, of Breercroft, for 20 acres.” – “The De Lacy Inquisition,” 1311.

      Adecock is Adam, and Mocock or Mokock is Matthew. In the same way Sander-cock is a diminutive of Sander, Lay-cock of Lawrence, Luccock of Luke, Pidcock and Peacock of Peter, Maycock and Mycock of Matthew, Jeff-cock of Jeffrey, Johncock of John, Hitch-cock or Hiscock or Heacock of Higg or Hick (Isaac), Elcock of Ellis, Hancock or Handcock of Han or Hand (Dutch John), Drocock or Drewcock of Drew, Wilcock of William, Badcock or Batcock of Bartholomew, and Bawcock of Baldwin, Adcock or Atcock of Adam, Silcock of Silas, and Palcock of Paul:

      “Johannes Palcock, et Beatrix uxor ejus, iiiid.” – W. D. S.

      “Ricardus Sylkok, et Matilda uxor ejus, iiiid.” – W. D. S.

      The difficulty of identification was manifestly lessened in a village or town where Bate could be distinguished from Batkin, and Batkin from Batcock. Hence, again, the common occurrence of such a component as cock. This diminutive is never seen in the seventeenth century; and yet we have many evidences of its use in the beginning of the sixteenth. The English Bible, with its tendency to require the full name as a matter of reverence, while it supplied new names in the place of the old ones that were accustomed to the desinence, caused this. It may be, too, that the new regulation of Cromwell in 1538, requiring the careful registration of all baptized children, caused parents to lay greater stress on the name as it was entered in the vestry-book.

      Any way, the sixteenth century saw the end of names terminating in “cock.”

(c.) On or In

      A dictionary instance is “violin,” that is, a little viol, a fiddle of four strings, instead of six. This diminutive, to judge from the Paris Directory, must have been enormously popular with our neighbours. Our connection with Normandy and France generally brought the fashion to the English Court, and in habits of this kind the English folk quickly copied their superiors. Terminations in kin and cock were confined to the lower orders first and last. Terminations in on or in, and ot or et, were the introduction of fashion, and being under patronage of the highest families in the land, naturally obtained a much wider popularity.

      Our formal registers, again, are of little assistance. Beton is coldly and orthodoxly Beatrice or Beatrix in the Hundred Rolls. Only here and there can we gather that Beatrice was never so called in work-a-day life. In “Piers Plowman” it is said —

      “Beton the Brewestere

      Bade him good morrow.”

      And again, later on:

      “And bade Bette cut a bough,

      And beat Betoun therewith.”

      If Alice is Alice in the registrar’s hands, not so in homely Chaucer:

      “This Alison answered: Who is there

      That knocketh so? I warrant him a thefe.”

      Or take an old Yorkshire will:

      “Item:

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