i:. COCKLE. 43 



found elsewhere. The costume of the women who 

 gather them is anything but becoming large fisher- 

 men's boots, their dresses so arranged as to resemble 

 very large knickerbockers, and an old hat or hand- 

 kerchief on their heads, with their baskets on their 

 backs. 



I am told that some of the Gower people, on the 

 north side of the seigniory of Gower (a Flemish colony 

 in Glamorganshire), live nine months in the year on 

 cockles. They also carry large quantities to Swansea 

 market, whence they are sent to London, and indeed 

 by rail to all parts of England. 



At Penclawdd tons of cockles are gathered to send 

 away, and women do the work. Mr. Wirt Sikes tells 

 us, that the sand-banks are lined with the "cockle- 

 wives " scraping for cockles, the scraper being made 

 from an old reaping-hook. The tide recedes for a 

 mile and exposes acres upon acres of sand in which the 

 cockles are embedded. Some of the women have 

 small carts or donkies with panniers, but the majority 

 carry their baskets on their heads. They earn in good 

 times, three or four shillings a day. The cockle is 

 usually boiled out of its shell, and sold by measure, 

 by the itinerant vendors. The cockles are generally 

 gathered on Friday for the Swansea market on 

 Saturday.* 



Mr. Baines, in his ' Explorations in South-West 

 Africa/ tells us that cockle-shells are greatly prized 

 by the Damaras, and if they are rich enough to afford 

 it, one is worn in the hair over the centre of the fore- 

 head ; and he adds, that if some friend at home would 

 invest three-halfpence in these favourite mollusks, and 

 * ' Old South Wales,' by Wirt Sikes, p. 243. 



