LAND OF COCKAYGNE, THE

(ca. 1275–1300)

The Land of Cockaygneis a MIDDLE ENGLISH poem in 190 lines of rough octosyllabic (eight-syllable) lines, probably written in Ireland in the late 13th century. The poem is a parody of the idea of the earthly paradise, and also a satire of monastic life. It survives in a single manuscript dated about 1330, containing Latin and French as well as English texts, and associated with the Franciscan abbey in Kildare.

The poem describes the paradisal Land of Cockaygne (the name, in French, probably means “Land of the Cakes”), which lies somewhere west of Spain. It is better than the recognized paradise, where the only thing to eat is fruit, and there is no alcohol at all.Cockaygne is a place where no one has to work and where the drinks flow free. There is an abbey in that land whose walls are formed out of pies, meat and fish, with shingles made of flour cakes, and nails formed from fat sausages. The monks can eat their fill without fear of recrimination. The wellsprings flow with wine, and the ground is made of gold and precious stones. The geese are roasted on a spit and then fly into the abbey crying out to be eaten. The monks themselves are able to fly, and wouldn’t come to evensong at all if the abbot did not call them by spanking a young maiden’s white buttocks like a drum to call them to prayers. The nuns from the convent near the monastery like to swim naked in the river of milk, and the young monks fly over them and pick out the ones with whom they want to have sex—they will have 12 different “wives” a year. Unfortunately, in order to reach this Paradise, one must go through an incredibly severe penance: walk through swines’ dung up to the chin for seven years.

The poem is in a tradition that goes back to Lucian’s satirical second centuryTrue History, which also describes a comic and licentious Paradise. It also draws, of course, on Christian traditions of the Earthly Paradise, as well as the GOLIARDIC VERSE celebrating food and drink. There are parallels toThe Land of Cockaygnein Irish satire, in Old French and in Anglo-Norman, but the ribald anticlerical satire makes this poem unique. It appears that the poem is intended to satirically express a monk’s vision of paradise, and ironically that vision is a place where he can engage in the sins of the flesh—sloth, greed, gluttony, and especially lust—without recrimination. He must only get through the penance of this world—perhaps his strict monastic life—to win the reward of an eternity of heavenly debauchery.

■ Jonassen, Frederick B. “Lucian’sSaturnalia, theLand of Cockaigne, and the Mummers’ Plays,”Folklore101 (1990): 58–68.

■ “The Land of Cokayne,” inMiddle English Literature, edited by Charles W. Dunn and Edward T. Byrnes. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973, 188–192.

■ Vasvari, Louise O. “The Geography of Escape and Topsy-Turvy Literary Genres.” InDiscovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Exploration and Imagination, edited by Scott D.Westrem, 178–192.New York: Garland, 1991.