"Unlesse it be shortly considered, and that faukons be broughte to _a more homelye diete_, it is ryght likely, that within a shorte space of yeares, our familiar pultry shall be as scarse, as be now partriche and fesaunte. I speake not this in disprayse of the faukons, but of them whiche keepeth them lyke _Cokeneys_."--Elyot, _The Governour_, 1557. "Some again are in the other extreme, and draw this mischief on their heads by too ceremonious and strict diet, being over precise _cockney-like_, and curious in their observation of meats."--Burton. _Anatomy of Melancholy_. Fuller's second sense is-- "One utterly ignorant of husbandry and huswifery such as is practised in the country, so that he may be easily persuaded anything about rural commodities, and the original thereof." He relates the old _cock-neigh_ story, and adds another jest of a similar kind: "One merrily persuaded a she-citizen, that seeing _malt_ did not grow, the good huswives in the country did spin it; 'I knew as much,' said the _Cockney_, 'for one may see the threads hang out at the ends thereof." Shakspeare uses the word _Cockney_ in this latter sense in _King Lear_, Act II. Sc. 4.: "_Lear._ Oh me, my heart, my rising heart! But down." "_Fool._ Cry to it, nuncle, as the _Cockney_ did to the eels, when she put 'em i' th' paste alive; she knapt 'em o' th' coxcombs with a stick, and cried 'Down, wantons, down;' 'twas her brother, that in pure kindness to his horse buttered his hay." _Cokeney_ was apparently used in very early times to designate _London_. In the _Britannia_, art. "Suffolk," Hugh Bigod, a rebellious baron in the time of Henry II., boasts thus: "Were I in my castle of Bungey, Upon the river Waveney, I would ne care for the King of _Cockeney_." I conceive that _Cokeney_ in this sense is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word _cycene_, a kitchen or cooking place. Nares, however, in his _Glossary_, says: "Le pais de cocagne, in French, means a country of good cheer; in old French _coquaine_; cocagna, in Italian, has the same meaning. Both might be derived from _coquina_. This famous country, if it could be found, is described as a region 'where the hills were made of sugar-candy, and the loaves ran down the hills, crying 'Come eat me, _come eat me_.'" Hickes gives, in his _Anglo-Saxon Grammar_, an ancient poem, describing the plenteous land of _Cokeney_ or _Cokaigne_: