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Elgar cockaigne overture
Cockaigne or Cockayne /kɒˈkeɪn/ 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.
Contents
- Elgar cockaigne overture
- Edward elgar cockaigne in london town concert overture op 40
- Etymology
- Descriptions
- Traditions
- Legacy
- Film
- References
Edward elgar cockaigne in london town concert overture op 40
Etymology
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.
In the 1820s, the name Cockaigne came to be applied jocularly to London, as the land of Cockneys, and thus "Cockaigne", though the two are not linguistically connected otherwise. The composer Edward Elgar used the title "Cockaigne" for his concert overture and suite evoking the people of London, Cockaigne (In London Town) (1901).
The Dutch villages of Kockengen and Koekange were named after Cockaigne. 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, 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 (2001):
Cockaigne was a "medieval peasant’s dream, offering relief from backbreaking labor and the daily struggle for meager food."
The Brothers Grimm collected and retold the fairy tale in Das Märchen vom Schlaraffenland (The Tale About the Land of Cockaigne).
Traditions
A Neapolitan tradition, extended to other Latin-culture countries, is the Cockaigne pole (Italia: 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.