This festival in its various intentions is found variously described as _hoke-day_, _hock-tide_, _hob-tide_, _hog’s-tide_, _hawkey_, _hockey_, _horkey_. As numerous as its names are the derivations suggested for them. Thus, Dr. J. Nott, in a note to Herrick’s Ode, _The Hock-Cart_, speaks of Hock-tide or _Heag-tide_ as signifying high-tide, the height of merriment (from _heag_ or _heah_, high). Bryant (cited in Nares’ _Glossary_) derives it from the German _hoch_, high. Fosbroke (_Encyc. Antiq._) speaks of the hocking on St. Blaze’s Day (Feb. 3) as taken from the women who were torn by _hokes_ and crotchets mentioned in his legend. Verstegan (_Restitution of Decayed Intelligence_, 1634) derives Hoc-tide from Heughtyde, which, he says, means in the Netherlands a festival season. Sir H. Spelman derives it from the German _hocken_, to put in heaps: a derivation which would well suit the application of the term to a harvest festival, as would the German _hocke_, a heap of sheaves. But surely S. D. Denne is right (_Hist. Particulars of Lambeth_) in deriving it from _hochzeit_, wedding. As it was at the celebration of the feast at the wedding of a Danish lord Canute Pruden with Lady Pitha that Hardicanute died suddenly, our ancestors had certainly sufficient grounds for distinguishing the day of so happy an event by a word denoting the wedding-feast, the wedding-day, the wedding Tuesday. And if the justness of this conjecture shall be allowed, may not the reason be discovered why the women bore rule on this celebrity, for all will admit that at a wedding the bride is the queen of the day.