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Cockaigne


Cockaigne or Cockayne /kɒˈkn/ 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, Cockaigne 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 cheeses). Writing about Cockaigne was a commonplace of Goliard verse. It represented both wish fulfillment and resentment at the strictures of asceticism and death.

While the first recorded uses of the name 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 (OED). 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 Spain 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.


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