and Jonson in his Masque, _The Gipsies Metamorphosed;_
“Lay by your wimbles, Your boring for thimbles, Or using your nimbles, In diving the pockets, And sounding the sockets Of _simper-the-cockets_.”
In a note on the latter passage, Whalley quotes from Cotgrave’s _Dict.:_ “_Coquine_, a beggar-woman, also a cockney, _simper de cockit_, nice thing.” Gifford (_ibid._) remarks, “_Cocket_ was a fine species of bread, as distinguished from common bread; hence, perhaps, the name was given to an overstrained affectation of delicacy. To _simper_ at, or over, a thing, is to touch it _as in scorn_.” Nares (_Gloss._ in v.) doubts (justly, I think) the connexion of _simper-the-cocket_ with _cocket_ bread, and explains it, “quasi simpering coquette,” observing, that “one of Cotgrave’s words in rendering ‘coquette’ is _cocket_.” I may add, that in _Gloss. of Prov. and Loc. Words_ by Grose and Pegge, ed. 1839, is, “_Cocket_, brisk, apish, pert,” and “_Simper_, to mince one’s words.”
_Her huke of Lyncole grene,_ _It had ben hers, I wene,_ _More then fourty yere_]
“Huke _surquanie, froc_.” Palsgrave’s _Lesclar. de la Lang. Fr._, 1530. fol. xli. (Table of Subst.). “A loose kind of garment, of the cloak or mantle kind.” Strutt’s _Dress and Habits_, &c. ii. 364. “_Lyncolne_ anciently dyed _the best greene_ of England.” Marg. note in Drayton’s _Polyolbion_, Song 25. p. 111. ed. 1622.—Compare a celebrated ballad;
“My _cloake_ it was a verry good cloake, Itt hath been alwayes true to the weare, But now it is not worth a groat; I have had it _four and forty yeere_.”
_Take thy old cloak about thee_,—Percy’s _Rel. of A. E. P._ i. 206. ed. 1794.
v. 68. _gytes_] i. e. clothes. _Gite_ is properly a gown:
Chaucer’s _Reves Tale_, v. 3952. ed. Tyr.
v. 69. _pranked with pletes_]—_pletes_, i. e. plaits. “I _Pranke_ ones gowne I set the _plyghtes_ in order.” Palsgrave’s _Lesclar. de la Lang. Fr._, 1530. fol. cccxxi. (Table of Verbes).
v. 70. _Her kyrtel Brystow red_]—_kyrtel_; see note, p. 149. v. 1194.
“London hath scarlet, and _Bristowe_ pleasaunt _red_.”
Barclay’s _Fourth Egloge_, sig. C iiii. ed. 1570.
“At _Brystowe_ is the best water to _dye reed_.” Hormanni _Vulgaria_, sig. V ii. ed. 1530.
v. 75. _whym wham_] i. e. something whimsically, fantastically devised. The word is frequently applied to articles of female finery by our early dramatists. In _Ane Interlude of the Laying of a Gaist_, we are told that the Gaist (ghost)