Merry England

"Merry England", or in more jocular, archaic spelling "Merrie England" (also styled as "Merrie Olde England"), refers to an English autostereotype, a utopian conception of English society and culture based on an idyllic pastoral way of life that was allegedly prevalent at some time between the Middle Ages and the onset of the Industrial Revolution. More broadly, it connotes a putative essential Englishness with nostalgic overtones, incorporating such cultural symbols as the thatched cottage, the country inn and the Sunday roast.

Children's storybooks and fairytales written in the Victorian period often used this as a setting as it is seen as a mythical utopia. They often contain nature-loving mythological creatures such as elves and fairies, as well as Robin Hood. It may be treated both as a product of the sentimental nostalgic imagination and as an ideological or political construct, often underwriting various sorts of conservative world-views.

"Merry England" is not a wholly consistent vision but rather a revisited England which Oxford folklorist Roy Judge described as "a world that has never actually existed, a visionary, mythical landscape, where it is difficult to take normal historical bearings." By contrast, Ronald Hutton's study of churchwardens' accounts places the creation of "Merry England" in the years between 1350 and 1520, with the newly elaborative annual festive round of the liturgical year, with candles and pageants, processions and games, boy bishops and decorated rood lofts. Hutton discovered that, far from being pagan survivals, many of the activities of popular piety criticised by sixteenth-century reformers were actually creations of the later Middle Ages and that "Merry England" reflects historical aspects of rural English folklore that were lost during industrialization. Favourable perceptions of Merry England reveal a nostalgia for aspects of an earlier society that are missing in modern times.

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