1420 Cockles

Let’s talk cockles.
Cockles are in all kinds of cultural references. The popular poem “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” features them prominently. Mary apparently uses them in a somewhat contrary fashion to populate her garden, which from all accounts also includes silver bells and pretty maids all in a row.
I want her fertilizer.
Then there’s the heartwarming phrase “it warms the cockles of my heart.” So what do cockles have to do with hearts? On the internet, speculation is that cockles themselves are heart-shaped, so there’s some connection.
Cockles, I only recently found out, are small heart-shaped edible clams. They’re from the family cardiidae, a Latin word that more or less means heart-shaped. Cockles are all over the place. They’re those ridged ones whose shells look not unlike ridged potato chips ready for the dipping.
They are hermaphroditic so you rarely see a cockle cuckold or a cuckolded cockle. Or you see them twice as much.
There are lots of varieties too, egg cockles and dog cockles and even blood cockles.
Yum.
Put up a plate of blood cockles lassie, they warms the cockles of me heart.
Why then, does one say that something or someone can warm the cockles of one’s heart? If whole cockles resemble the whole heart, are there multiple clam-like things in the heart?
Some have advanced the theory that cockles refer to heart valves. Perhaps warming the valves gets the blood racing, which leads to feelings of warmth and pleasure.
Not likely, folk tales and advanced anatomy are not often related. Unscientific folkies even have problems with architectural and space limitations. Witness that old lady’s inhabitation of a shoe.
All I know is, from now on out when someone says it warms the cockles of their heart, I’m gonna think they feel clammy.
America, ya gotta love it.