V. i. 1. cock and pie. The origin of this common

Elizabethan oath is obscure. Cock is probably a corruption of God, as in the oath Cock’s wounds; and pie is perhaps the Roman service book which was sometimes so called, though the word pie applies more properly to the index of the service book. By Shakespeare’s time the meaning of the oath was for¬ gotten, and Justice Shallow doubtless thinks he is swearing by a cock and a magpie.