ETYMOLOGY
apparently originally from cock (an edible bivalve mollusc found on the coasts of Britain, probably a cockle, obs.) + bell
EXAMPLE (for n. 2)
“… My beard had sometimes yce on it as big as my little finger, my breath turning into many cock-bells as I walked…”
From: The Bargrave MS. Diary, 1645
in A Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect and Provincialisms in use in the County of Kent
By William Douglas Parish, & William Francis Shaw, 1887
Lexicophilia 