Andrew M. Ward

August 2026

Cockaigne is the mythical land of plenty found across the European medieval imaginary. Key to it’s appeal were its three defining transformations: the absence of work, the upending of social hierarchies, and endless food. The world was literally made of food; the animal kingdom reimagined as a conveyor belt of ready to eat produce, a walking and flying rotisserie, and bountiful harvests simply emerged in the fields all year round ripe for anyone who passes. Given the drudgery of peasant life and the threat of famine and disease, it isn’t hard to understand the appeal of endless feasting. Not the daily foods of bread and stew, but rich, rewarding cheeses, meats and fruits which would have been the preserve of the rich.

Medieval Europe is by far from the only mythical tradition facilitating infinite eating: the Norse Saga’s Sæhrímnir is the boar devoured each night in Valhalla by both gods and fallen warriors alike, only to be resurrected for the following day’s feast. In Greek mythology, we have the horn of Amalthea, the divine goat or nymph which suckled Zeus, and which the King of the Gods blessed with never-ending sustenance, the later Latin translation of which gives us the word and image for cornucopia.

Medieval Cockaigne had several afterlives, including in 17th and 18th century Naples. On feast days, monumental ‘Cuccagna arches’ or even temporary palaces were constructed, often wooden structures where meats, sweets and bread food gifted by the local nobility would be placed. The ravenous crowd would be permitted to destroy the monument and eat the food, to the enjoyment of the watching nobles. The spectacle of philanthropy also becomes a grotesque display of power, with Cuccagna’s occasionally descending into stampede and death. Charles III of Naples even set up a fund to support the widows of Cuccagna. Another interpretation of Cockaigne as a land of spiritual emptiness resulting from gluttony and sloth can be seen in Pieter Bruegel the Elders’ 1567 painting of Schlaraffenland - literally ‘the lazy tasty land’, in which a peasant, a clerk and a soldier all lay collapsed having overindulged from a table above their heads.

Cockaigne also had an afterlife in the utopia of Merry (or Merrie) England, a nostalgic conception of pre-industrial rural peasant culture that it’s proponents suggest was predominant from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution. It is a vision of an essential England, of egalitarian, rural, particularly pastoral and somewhat mythological nature, invoking both Robin Hood, faeries and other woodland creatures. It is a land of thatched cottages, abundant harvest and rustic merriment. Historian Roy Judge asserts it is ‘a world that has never actually existed, a visionary, mythical landscape, where it is difficult to take normal historical bearings’. But Merry England also recalls a decline in rural customs, festivals and feasts. Ronald Hutton’s meticulous study ‘The Rise and Fall of Merry England’ examines how religious and secular rituals responded to social, political and religious change in the 15th and 16th century England, and does suggest a decline in merriness and a creeping conservatism as both church and state take a more somber approach to governance. Tom Hodgkison, who interviewed Hutton for The Guardian in 2006, gives his take: ‘Merry England was not a myth. They really did use to dance around the maypole, feast all day and drink beer all night’. Victorian storybooks often combined mythological elements like elves and fairies with characters like Robin Hood when using Merry England as a setting. The most famous example of ‘Merry England’ is perhaps the Shire in the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbits’ of which display a self-sufficient abundance matched by their capacity for feasting and merriment. The Shire, with its lush rolling countryside and community of agrarian simplicity resembles many of the themes of Merry England.

Many utopias offer a complex vision of an ideal society, with prescriptions for organization. Others simply challenge our priorities, and ask us whether we might, like the hobbits, want to feast and drink to our hearts desire, and avoid any unnecessary toil or trouble. We might just have lost our sense of fun and fantasy.