Hot Cockles

Peep this palimpsest.¹

It’s ivory, c. 14th century France. It was probably paired with another plaque of the same size² and hinged down the center, the carved exterior serving as a sort of cover. The back of it, made of a thin layer of wax, would have been used by its owner to write notes or figures or calculations using a stylus. To “reset” the surface for future note-taking, the backside would have been melted down and left to dry. In his book on medieval medicine, which is where I first encountered this piece, art historian and author Jack Hartnell likens it to “a medieval Etch-a-Sketch.”³ Dope!

The front of the tablet, though, is a little bit…je n’ais c’est quois, which in this case translates roughly to what le fuck?

There’s a couple making out in the top right corner; a few women in the background with their hands raised in the air; a dude in the foreground on his knees who kind of looks like he’s praying—intensely; and then there’s the seated woman in the bottom right, her left hand on a kneeling man’s head, which, along with at least his right hand, is under her dress. Huh.

The scene, according to Hartnell, shows a game of Hot Cockles:

“To play, someone is blindfolded and then spanked…The game finished with the blindfold figure guessing the identity of his or her slapper by the sting of their spank alone. If they were correct, they would be rewarded with a kiss, as shown at the ivory’s upper-right, where a victorious couple quietly smooch along the arches.”

Well, shit. Color me curious. What’s a cockle? Why’s it hot? What’s it got to do with spanking and kissing? What is this game, and why? Is its sexy name on purpose?

Get in loser, we’re going hot cockles-ing.

*

Hot Cockles is the English name for the (most recently) French-ish game La Main Chaude. The extant artifactual evidence I found depicting the game dates back to the early 1330s and is mostly produced by Northern Europeans, but its origins are thought to go back to antiquity.⁴ The game is also known in French as Haute Coquilles and Le Frappe Main, though, from what I could tell, with much less frequency and with far fewer written or visual references.

The particulars of the game differ depending on the source, but the general gist of it is this: Someone is struck from behind and must guess who struck them. Once they do, the person who did the striking becomes the next to be stricken. It is variously described as a children’s game, a family game,⁵ a sailor’s game, a peasant’s game, and a high society game (described as both “romantic”⁶ and “bawdy”⁷). Sometimes it’s the person’s hand, placed behind their back, that is struck; sometimes it’s their back; sometimes it’s their butt. In most instances, the person being struck is said or shown to bury their head in a seated person’s lap; in other instances, furniture; in the first case, men are depicted burying their heads in the laps of women much more often than the other way around.

It’s considered a variation of Blind Man’s Buff, another popular game of the past, which itself was a version of Tag where the person who was “it” was blindfolded. If you think it sounds strange, you’re not alone. Writing about household games in 1864, a London Society magazine column remarked about Hot Cockles, “Wherein the fun—supposing there to be any—lies, it is quite impossible to say; and nobody will, I suppose, call it a scientific game.”

Aside from a few early 14th century scenes of its play, the game—or at least depictions and descriptions of it—seems to have peaked in popularity in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly with the French, Dutch, and Flemish (in 17th and 18th century art), and the English (in 19th century writing).

While described as being played by a varied demographic, it’s most frequently described as a children’s game, but is most often depicted as an adult’s game. In early depictions, those adults are painted as peasants, using a muted palette and shadowed interiors so that the spaces in which they’re shown feel dark and damp, reinforcing the game’s negative perception and association with low-class life.

It wasn’t until the Dutch duo Christoffel Jacobsz Van der Lamen, a painter, and Hiëronymus Janssens, his pupil, introduced the game into painting “within the context of well-to-do bourgeois and aristocratic play and courting”⁴ in the late 17th century that the perception and acceptance of the game among the upper echelons of society began to shift.

Previously considered low-class, the game, now reimagined as appropriate for the gentry, was no longer an innocent children’s game, a rough sailor’s game, or a crass peasant’s game. It was, effectively, rebranded through art as “an aristocratic leisurely activity” (painted in outdoor spaces with brighter, lighter, softer palettes) that was in real life imitated by the bourgeoisie. The culture of play during the period was an important part of upper-class life, and the game served as a form of social intercourse important to the wooing and courting that would lead to the other type of intercourse.⁴

The game seems to have become “obsolete” by 1874.⁸

*

So, what about the name of the game?

Given the current common usage in English of the word “cock” for “penis,”⁹ it seems like the “cock” in “cockles” is a fun little confirmation of the game’s blatant erotic and sexual ~suggestions~. Paired with the current common usage in English of the word “hot” to reference sex-adjacent things, the English name of the game seems much more conspiracy than coincidence, no? Let’s check it out.

La Main Chaude

The most popular French name of the game that I encountered, La Main Chaude translates to The Hot Hand. Assuming that “hot” alludes to either the hand doing the striking or the body part receiving the strike becoming hot with the string of the strike, this name makes sense—in both French and English, and among all groups of people who might play. 

Le Main Chaude/The Hot Hand also makes sense in the context of adult-only play of the game, when assuming that “hot” alludes to sex or sex-adjacent things (usage of the word “hot” in English in a sexual manner dates back to the 1500s,¹⁰ so this is deffo feasible in English; I don’t know if the same is true of the French “chaude”).

Le Frappe Main

Another French name for the game, Le Frappe Main also makes sense when translated to English—The Hitting Hand. This name doesn’t seem to be particularly popular, though. I found less than a handful of references to the game as Le Frappe Main.

Haute Coquilles 

While the most similar in sight and sound to the English name of the game, I encountered Haute Coquilles far less than I did La Main Chaude. In French, “haute” means “top” or “high” as in a literal peak or “elevated status” or “the best of its kind”; it does not, despite the visual and phonetic suggestion, translate in English to “hot”; it doesn’t not reference in English either literal temperature or sex and sex-adjacent things (if you Google “haute coquilles” you get results relating mostly to shellfish and fashion). The French word “coquilles” means “shells” in English. The English translation of Haute Coquilles, then, is High Shells. Maybe “high” references the player’s backside being up in the air, awaiting to be struck. Or perhaps it’s a confirmation of the eventual acceptance of the game among the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, a strategy of semantics in action. Shells, though?

Hot Cockles

A cockle is a type of edible shellfish popular in Europe, particularly in the UK.¹¹ They’re prepared by steaming, which means the shell upon serving is, literally, hot. Simplified, Hot Cockles means Hot Shells. Or, given the usage of the word “hot” in English to connote sex and sex-adjacent things,¹⁰ maybe Sexy Shells. Either way, I’ve no clue where along the way in French or in English shellfish came into it. Perhaps steamed cockle was a popular dish served in spaces the game was played. Maybe the opened cockle shell was thought to look-ish like bent-over buttocks. Unclear.

What is clear, though, is that even without an iota of context, the English phrase “hot cockles” just sounds like it’s about sex, or something adjacent. Given the “hedonistic”⁴ associations and intimations of innuendo embedded within the game, and the longstanding usage of “hot” in English to refer to sex and sex-adjacent things paired with the similarly longstanding usage of “cock” in English to refer to the penis, it seems, then, that the name of the game is a convenient and cheeky anglicization of Haute Coquilles—and probably one made on purpose.

 

Notes, etc.

Anyone else read “hot cockles” to the tune of “hot pockets,” or find the architectural detail depicted in the ivory tablet at the top slightly reminiscent of the Three of Pentacles from the Rider-Waite tarot deck?

1. 1. A palimpsest is a reusable writing surface. In this case, it’s an ivory tablet with a wax-coated backside. However, many surviving palimpsests are on parchment, a material more durable than both papyri and paper. Before the production of documents and books was easy, it wasn’t. It was a long, manual process and materials weren’t wasted. Pages were “washed” and reused to compose new documents and publications.
   2. The tablet is tiny, measuring only 5 centimeters by 8 centimeters.
   3. Jack Hartnell, Medieval Bodies: Life, Art and Death in the Middle Ages, 2019, p. 181.
   4. Hannelore Magnus, “The Seventeenth-Century Young Gentry at Hot Cockles: Investigating a Southern Netherlandish Novelty as a Prelude to the Rococo Fêtes Galantes,” 2015, Dutch Crossing, 39:2, 128-149, DOI: 10.1179/0309656415Z.00000000074
   5. As a family game, Hot Cockles is described and depicted as being played at weddings (as shown in the de Man painting above), at funerals (as shown in the manuscript margin below), and at Christmas (here and here).

      

   6. Jack Hartnell, Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Content and Context, 2017, p. 158.
   7. Allison McCann, Women’s Books? Gendered Piety and Patronage in Late Medieval Bohemian Illuminated Codices, 2019, pp. 23-24.
   8. Thomas Wright, A History of English Culture from the Earliest Known Period to Modern Times, 1874, p. 245.
   9. The word “cock” originally referred to domestic male fowl. “Cock” as slang for “penis” dates back to the early 14th century, with more consistent usage in this manner by the late 16th century. By the late 18th century the usage of “cock” had become primarily a reference to the human male penis and the word “rooster” was created to replace it. See: Oxford English Dictionary online entry for “cock,” AI1 and AIII9a.
   10. The word “hot” to refer to sexual desire, excitement, and arousal dates back to the early 15th century. See: Oxford English Dictionary online entry for “hot,” II. Extended uses, 8c.
   11. The consumption of cockle in the UK has an interesting and storied history that is worth checking out.