“N’avez vous pas fait ce que certaines femmes ont coutume de faire? Elles se dépouillent de leurs habits, oignent leur corps nu avec du miel, étendent à terre un drap, sur lequel elles répandent du bléd, se roulent dessus à plusieurs reprises; puis elles recueillent avec soin tous les grains qui se sont attachés à leur corps, les mettent sur la meule qu’elles font tourner à rebours. Quand ils sont réduits en farine, elles en font un pain qu’elles donnent à manger à leurs maris afin qu’ils s’affaiblissent et qu’ils meurent. Si vous l’avez fait, vous ferez pénitence pendant quarante jours au pain et à l’eau.... Fecisti quod quædam mulieres facere solent? Tollunt menstruum suum sanguinem et immiscent cibo vel potui, et dant viris suis ad manducandum vel ad bibendum, ut plus diligantur ab eis.... Fecisti quod quædam mulieres facere solent? Prosternunt se in faciem, et discoopertis natibus, jubent ut supra nudas nates, conficiatur panis, et eo decocto tradunt maritis suis ad comedendum. Hoc ideo faciunt ut plus exardescant in amorem illarum. Si fecisti duos annos per legitimas ferias pœnitias.”—(Dulaure, “Traité des Différens Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 262 _et seq._) The method of divination by which maidens strove to rekindle the expiring flames of affection in the hearts of husbands and lovers by making cake from dough kneaded on the woman’s posterior, as given in preceding paragraph, seems to have held on in England as a game among little girls, in which one lies down on the floor, on her back, rolling backwards and forwards, and repeating the following lines:— “Cockledy bread, mistley cake, When you do that for our sake.” While one of the party so lay down the rest of the party sat round; they lay down and rolled in this manner by turns. Cockle Bread. This singular game is thus described by Aubray and Kennett: “Young wenches have a wanton sport which they call ‘moulding of cockle bread,’ viz.: they get upon a table-board, and then gather up their knees as high as they can, and then they wobble to and fro, as if they were kneading of dough, and say these words: ‘My dame is sick, and gone to bed, And I’ll go mould my cockle bread, Up with my heels, and down with my head!— And this is the way to mould cockle bread.’” —(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 414, article “Cockle Bread.”) These words “mistley” and “cockledy” were not to be found in any of the lexicons examined, or in the “Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English” of Thomas Wright, M. A., London, 1869, although in the last was the word “mizzly” meaning “mouldy.” It may possibly mean mistletoe.