The Land of Cockaygne was a fictional land of plenty popularized in the Middle Ages throughout the European continent. It was described as a magical utopia where the peasantry was free from labor and exploitation, houses were made of foodstuffs, and the inhabitants never went without. Whilst reminiscent of the childhood images of the witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel, or the magical environment in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, Cockaygne was decidedly more adult oriented. Here the fountains gushed the finest wines, rivers and streams were milk and honey. Hotcakes grew from trees, geese basted themselves with garlic sauce and pre-roasted pigs ran around the streets with knives in their back, calling out for a passerby to carve off a slice or two. In some versions, the land also incorporated sexual hedonistic pleasures flowing freely as well.

While the idea of Cockaygne probably existed in oral folklore beforehand, it was found in the Kildare Poems, a manuscript containing 16 Middle English poems dated to the mid 14^th century.  “The Land of Cockaygne” was recorded in this collection, a satirical poem centering around a group of corrupt monks. The poem begins by extolling the virtues of Cockaygne, declaring it favorable to even paradise itself as heaven is filled with virtuous, yet boring, inhabitants and stipulates a prohibition on alcohol. As the poem progresses through the gastronomic countryside made up of edible meats and cheeses so do the transgressions of the monks, eventually culminating with each of them retrieving one of the many naked nuns bathing in a nearby river and well and truly dispelling any notion of celibacy.

For the lower classes, Cockaygne presented an alternative from the daily starvation, long hours and unhygienic conditions they suffered under. References in “The Land of Cockaygne” poem suggest that a world without the constant bites of fleas or lice or never having to dig pigshit were only imagined ideals: “There’s no fly or flea or louse/ In clothes, in village, bed, or house”. This juxtaposition between the real and imagined worlds demonstrates how truly horrific living conditions were for the average peasant. The church and state had a different opinion of Cockaygne, weaponizing it against the lower class as symptomatic of their spiritual emptiness. They connected the idea of Cockaygne with the sloth and gluttony, insisting that without their spiritual penance and hard labor the church and state forced upon the lower classes, the common peasant would be awash is their own greed and laziness.

The idea of Cockaygne began to manifest in reality in the hands of the Italian bourgeois in the early 18^th Century, especially around Naples and the surrounding region.  Veiled under a thin guise of charity, the upper class would often construct temporary monuments in homage to Cockaygne, or Cuccagna as it was known in the Italian translation. Here, the bourgeois would create giant scenes out of edible foodstuffs, and watch as the lower classes battled to grab as much of the food as possible. The Cuccagna was designed to be a spectacle, and was a vicious affair with starving hordes fighting for the meat and protein their daily diets were mostly devoid from. Live animals including horned bulls and tusked wild pigs were let loose in the arena adding to the brutal extravaganza, while live geese and birds were secured by a wing to greased poles, which the peasants would have to first climb and then tear the creature away from its limb to claim their prize. Eventually famines in the latter half of the century started to impact the tradition, and after the starving hordes destroyed the monument before the king’s signal, ruining the enjoyment of the tradition for the upper classes. 

Like most folklore, the idea of Cockaygne continued to exist in various regional forms, under various regional names. As travelers set off to the new world their ideas went with them, and morphed into new regional varieties. Folklorist, John Minton, suggests that the idea of Cockaygne was used to lure slaves to the new world under promises of a better life. He recounts the story of a 12-year-old slave boy stolen from the coast of West Africa and sold on the New Orleans auction block.  The boy reported two white men arriving, and yelling from the deck of the boat promised passage to America, touting it as the land of plenty:

Dey wuz wavin’ their hands fo’ us to come on boa’d. They not only waved, they pleaded wid us, ‘Come wid us and see what we got in America! It’s a country where you never have to work.’ ‘What do you do when you gets hungry?’ we axed. ‘In America we grow fritter [pancake] trees.’ ‘What’s a fritter tree?’ someone axed. .. .’We grow fritter trees in America like you grow apple trees or orange trees.

The boy then explained that those intrigued, himself included, were taken below deck to see this mythical fritter tree, and were surprised to encounter a plant laden with pancakes and covered in syrup. The slavers encouraged the party to stay and eat their fill from the tree, which they did. Only belatedly realizing that the tree was a distraction and the slavers had cast of their lines and sailed out to sea, imprisoning those on board.

Fantastical utopias have long been the realm of escape for the downtrodden, and Cockaygne was no different. The motivating elements in these worlds are generally the antithesis of the world in which daily drudgery is spent and provide great social commentary of those times. In the case of earlier versions of Cockaygne, it was also a means to express societal discontent and leverage accusations of corruption at church and state officials without formal punishment and recourse. Cockaygne, like many social constructs remains a sanctuary the oppressed can never reach, and a method of manipulation oppressors will continually use to exploit them.

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Works Cited

Minton, John. “Cockaigne to Diddy Wah Diddy: Fabulous Geographies and Geographic Fabulations.” Folklore, vol. 102, no. 1, 1991, pp. 39–47. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1260355.

“The Land of Cockaygne”. Translation by J. A. Bennett and G.V. Smithers http://wpwt.soton.ac.uk/trans/cockaygn/coctrans.htm