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Cockaigne or Cockayne () is a land of plenty in medieval myth, an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures are always immediately at hand and where the harshness of medieval peasant life does not exist. Specifically, in poems like ''The Land of Cockaigne'', it is a land of contraries, where all the restrictions of society are defied (abbots beaten by their monks), sexual liberty is open (nuns flipped over to show their bottoms), and food is plentiful (skies that rain cheese). Writing about Cockaigne was commonplace in Goliard verse. It represented both wish fulfillment and resentment at scarcity and the strictures of asceticism.

Etymology

While the first recorded uses of the word are the Latin ''Cucaniensis'' and the Middle English ''Cokaygne'', one line of reasoning has the name tracing to Middle French ''(pays de) cocaigne'' "(land of) plenty", ultimately adapted or derived from a word for a small sweet cake sold to children at a fair. In Ireland, it was mentioned in the '' Kildare Poems'', composed c. 1350. In Italian, the same place is called ''Paese della Cuccagna''; the Flemish-Belgian equivalent is ''Luilekkerland'' ("relaxed luscious, delicious land"), translated from the Middle-Belgian word ''Cockaengen'', and the German equivalent is ''Schlaraffenland''. In Spanish, an equivalent place is named ''Jauja'', after a rich mining region of the Andes, and ''País de Cucaña'' ("fools' paradise") may also signify such a place. From Swedish dialect ''lubber'' ("fat lazy fellow") comes ''Lubberland'', popularized in the ballad '' An Invitation to Lubberland''.

In the 1820s, the name ''Cockaigne'' came to be applied jocularly to London as the land of Cockneys ("Cockney" from a "cock's egg", an implausible creature; see also basilisk), though the two are not linguistically connected otherwise. The composer Edward Elgar used the word "Cockaigne" for his concert overture and suite evoking the people of London, ''Cockaigne (In London Town)'', Op. 40 (1901).

The Dutch villages of Kockengen and Koekange may be named after Cockaigne, though this has been disputed. The surname Cockayne also derives from the mythical land, and was originally a nickname for an idle dreamer.

Descriptions

Like Atlantis and El Dorado, the land of Cockaigne was a utopia. It was a fictional place where, in a parody of paradise, idleness and gluttony were the principal occupations. In ''Specimens of Early English Poets'' (1790), George Ellis printed a 13th-century French poem called "The Land of Cockaigne" where "the houses were made of barley sugar and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry, and the shops supplied goods for nothing".

According to Herman Pleij, ''Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life'' (2003):

Cockaigne was a "medieval peasant’s dream, offering relief from backbreaking labor and the daily struggle for meager food."

Traditions

A Neapolitan and Southern Italian tradition, extended to Southern Italian diaspora communities and other Latin culture countries, is the Cockaigne pole (Italian: cuccagna; Spanish: cucaña), a horizontal or vertical pole with a prize (like a ham) at one end. The pole is covered with grease or soap and planted during a festival. Then, daring people try to climb the slippery pole to get the prize. The crowd laughs at the often failed attempts to hold on to the pole.

Legacy

Placenames

* The Dutch village of Kockengen in the province of Utrecht is likely to have been named after Cockaigne by the local clergy, who established farms and peat-cutting settlements in the area.
* The Canadian town of Cocagne, New Brunswick, at the mouth of the Cocagne river, was named after Cockaigne.
* The English Village of Cockayne Hatley in Bedfordshire was named after the Cokayne family, who took possession of the land in 1417.

Literature

* "Ego sum abbas Cucaniensis" ("I am the Abbot of Cockaigne") is one of the drinking songs (''Carmina potatoria'') found in the 13th-century manuscript of ''Songs from Benediktbeuern'', better known for its inclusion in Carl Orff's secular cantata, ''Carmina Burana''.
* The Land of Toys (or Pleasure Island) from ''The Adventures of Pinocchio'' (1883) is said to be located in Cockaigne.
* "L'invitation au voyage", a prose-poem by the French poet Charles Baudelaire, found in his collection ''Paris'' ''Spleen'''','' makes reference to the "land of Cocaigne", there envisioned as a country in keeping with Baudelaire's poetic ideals, such as silence, decorum, indolence, and artifice. He describes it as "the East of the West, the China of Europe", as he describes it as being located to the North and as being possessed of qualities thought of as being essentially "Oriental" by the Europeans of the time.
* “The Land of Cockaigne” is the first poem in the 2015 book “The Emperor of Water Clocks” by Yusef Komunyakaa, an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1994.
* James Branch Cabell in his ''Jurgen a comedie of justice'' circa 1919, has the land of Cocaigne between the lands of sunrise and morning. ch XXIV. "Thus Jurgen abode for a little over two months in Cocaigne, and complied with the customs of that country. Nothing altered in Cocaigne: but in the world wherein Jurgen was reared, he knew, it would by this time be September, with the leaves flaring gloriously, and the birds flocking southward, and the hearts of Jurgen's fellows turning to not unpleasant regrets. But in Cocaigne there was no regret and no variability, but only an interminable flow of curious pleasures, illumined by the wandering star of Venus Mechanitis."

Painting

* "The Land of Cockaigne" was depicted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in his painting '' Luilekkerland'' (1567).
* ''Cockaigne'', a 2003 painting by Vincent Desiderio.

Music

* ''Cockaigne (In London Town)'' is a concert overture composed by Edward Elgar in 1901.
* The folk song "Big Rock Candy Mountain", first recorded by Harry McClintock in 1928, depicts a hobo's idea of paradise along the lines of Cockaigne, with "cigarette trees" and hens that lay soft-boiled eggs.
* The album '' Land of Cockayne'' (1981) by Soft Machine.
* Edenbridge's song ''The Most Beautiful Place'' mentions "You are what I call Cockaign".
* Jacques Brel's song Le Plat Pays mentions "Et de noirs clochers comme mâts de cocagne" (and black steeples like cockaigne poles)
* Carl Orff’s choral work ''Carmina Burana'', a musical setting of anonymous mediæval ribald verse in Latin and Middle Low German, includes the song ''Ego sum abbas Cucaniensis'' or "I am the abbot of Cockaigne".
* * A song "The Land of Cockaigne" can be found on the 2017 album "A Coat Worth Wearing" by the Scots born, Sheffield based musician Neil McSwenny Neil McSweeney

Comics

* Cockaigne is the home of Narda, the wife of Mandrake the Magician (created by Lee Falk).

Film

* '' Hans Trutz in the Land of Plenty'', a 1917 German fantasy film by Paul Wegener.
* ''Mischief in Wonderland'', a 1957 German fantasy film starring Alexander Engel.
* '' Pays de cocagne'', a 1971 documentary film directed by Pierre Étaix.

Various

* ''The Joy of Cooking'' (first edition 1931) uses the word "Cockaigne" to indicate that the recipe was a favorite of the authors' parents.
* A ski resort in Cherry Creek, New York bore the name Cockaigne until its 2011 closure. New ownership announced the resort would reopen in December 2019.

See also

*Arcadia (utopia)
*Big Rock Candy Mountain
*Cloud cuckoo land
* El Dorado
*Paradise
*Shangri-La
*Cocaine

References

Further reading

* Luisa Del Giudice, "Mountains of Cheese and Rivers of Wine: Paesi di Cuccagna and other Gastronomic Utopias," in ''Imagined States: National Identity, Utopia, and Longing in Oral Cultures'', ed. by Luisa Del Giudice and Gerald Porter, Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001: 11–63.
* Hardstaff, Sarah. “Candytown and the Land of Cockaigne: Gastronomic Utopia in The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and Other Children’s Literature.” ''Marvels & tales'' 34.1 (2020): 39–52.
* Herman Pleij, ''Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life'', trans. Diane Webb. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.

External links

Original text and translations of poems of CokaygneReference.com entryEncyclopedia.com entryEncyclopædia Britannica entry

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Medieval legends
Mythological kingdoms, empires, and countries
Mythical utopias