216. _Cockney._--In John Minshieu's _Ductor in Linguas_, published in
1617, the origin of this word is thus explained:--
"That a citizen's son riding with his father out of London into
the country, and being a novice and merely ignorant how corn and
cattle increased, asked, when he heard a horse neigh, what the
horse did? His father answered, the horse doth neigh. Riding
further he heard a cock crow, and said, doth the _cock neigh_
too?"
I should not have troubled you with this story had I not been anxious to
ascertain the real origin of the word "Cockney," about which Johnson
seems to have been nearly as much in the dark as I am. For any other and
more rational explanation I shall be much obliged, as well as by being
informed from what source Minshieu derived this story of a cock and a
horse, which I am confident I have met with elsewhere, and which is
probably familiar to many of your readers.