A saying that’s truly heartfelt
QUESTION Why does something ‘warm the cockles of the heart’? THE cockle is an edible burrowing bivalve mollusc, common on sandy coasts (Genus Cardium, family Cardiidae). the word is from Old french coquille, meaning shell.
the expression ‘the cockles of one’s heart’ is first recorded in Some Observations upon the Answer to An enquiry Into the Grounds And Occasions Of the Contempt Of the Clergy (1671), by college head John eachard (1637-97): ‘I am confident of it, that this contrivance of his, did inwardly as much rejoice the cockles of his heart, as he f ancies, that what I writ did sometimes much tickle my spleen.’
the idiom, reflecting a glow of pleasure, sympathy or affection, quickly became popular, but the earliest example of the full phrase was in 1855: ‘I would commend you to him, for it will warm the cockles of his old heart to learn that the “Young ’un” is in luck’ — the History Of the Hen fever: A Humorous record by George P. Burnham.
A common explanation is that the creatures are heart-shaped — they were later given the zoological name Cardium, from the Greek kardia (heart).
But in the Latin tractatus De Corde (A treatise On the Heart — 1669), physician and physiologist richard Lower (1631-91) wrote, about the muscular fibres of the ventricles: ‘ Fibræ [ . . .] spirali suo ambitu helicem sive cochleam satis aptè referunt.’ (translation: these fibres [ . . .], with their spiral circuit, may rather aptly be referred to as a Helix or snail-shell.)
Lower’s text may be an intriguing hint as to the true origin of the expression — the spiral- shaped ventricles of the heart were in Medieval Latin called cochleæ cordis, where the second word is an inflected form of cor, heart, while cochlea is the Latin for snail. (Cochlea is similarly the name given to the spiral cavity of the inner ear).
those unversed in Latin could have misinterpreted cochleae as cockles — or it might have started out as a deliberate play on words.
Jim Stuart, edinburgh. QUESTION According to The Sound Of ITV: The Nation’s Favourite Theme Tunes, Gerard Kenny, who wrote the Minder song I Could Be So Good For You, also wrote Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York. Is this correct? I thought it was written by Fred Ebb and John Kander. FURTHER to an earlier answer, I Could Be So Good for You, the theme tune to the TV drama series Minder, was co-written by Kenny and Minder star Dennis Waterman’s then-wife Patricia Waterman.
F. harvey, Bristol.