Hot-cockles seems formerly to have been a very favourite game. One of the players was blindfolded, and knelt down, with his face on the knee of another, and his hand held out flat behind him; the other players in turn struck him on the hand, and he was obliged to guess at the name of the striker, who, if he guessed right, was compelled to take his place. A part of the joke appears to have consisted in the hardness of the blows. Our cut (No. 161), from the Bodleian manuscript (which was written in 1344), is evidently intended to represent a party of females playing at hot-cockles, though the damsel who plays the principal part is not blindfolded, and she is touched on the back, and not on the hand. Our next cut (No. 162), which represents a party of shepherds and shepherdesses engaged in the same game, is taken from a piece of Flemish tapestry, of the fifteenth century, which is at present to be seen in the South Kensington Museum. Allusions to this game are found in the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among the “commendatory verses” to the second edition of “Gondibert” (by William Davenant), printed in 1653, is the following rather curious piece of wit, which explains itself, and is, at the same time, an extremely good description of this game:-- THE POET’S HOT-COCKLES. _Thus poets, passing time away._ _Like children at_ hot-cockles _play; _All strike by turn, and Will is strook_ _(And he lies down that writes a book)_. _Have at thee, Will, for now I come,_ _Spread thy hand faire upon thy bomb;_ _For thy much insolence, bold bard,_ _And little sense I strike thus hard._ _“Whose hand was that?” “’Twas Jaspar Mayne.”_ _“Nay, there you’re out; lie down again.”_ _With Gondibert, prepare, and all_ _See where the doctor comes to maul_ _The author’s hand, ’twill make him reel;_ _No, Will lies still, and does not feel._ _That book’s so light, ’tis all one whether_ _You strike with that or with a feather._ _But room for one, new come to town,_ _That strikes so hard, he’ll knock him down;_ _The hand he knows, since it the place_ _Has toucht more tender than his face;_ _Important sheriff, now thou lyst down,_ _We’ll kiss thy hands, and clap our own._ The game of hot-cockles has only become obsolete in recent times, if it be even now quite out of use. Most readers will remember the passage in Gay’s “Pastorals:”-- _As at_ hot-cockles _once I laid me down,_ _And felt the weighty hand of many a clown,_ _Buxoma gave a gentle tap, and I_ _Quick rose, and read soft mischief in her eye_.