Schlaraffenland/Cockaigne/Land of Plenty

[ShibbOleth]

I first heard of das Schlaraffenland a few years back from a Swiss colleague. He told me it was a place where, once you ate through ten feet of pudding to get inside (blecch!) you could eat whatever you want. I recently asked another German colleague about this and he corrected it as a wall of porridge. Inside flew preroasted birds. Preroasted swine wander about with forks stuck in their backs, in case you want to take a bite.

I tried to Google something about this, but all of the sites I found were in German and I’m too lazy to dig through the German since there’s bound to be a lot of stuff that I’d have to look up in my trusty Oxford German dictionary. When I looked up Schlaraffenland in said Oxford dictionary, it translated to Cockaigne.

Now I’d never heard of Cockaigne until today. So I googled on that. This seems to come from a 13th century poem, in either Middle French or English, about a place called Cokagyne. Pais de cocaigne translates as land of plenty, at least according to Webster.

My questions:
[ul]
[li]Any idea where to find a good translation of the original stories of Schlaraffenland or Cockaigne?[/li]
[li]Is the German an adaptation/later version of the Middle English/French, or a separate story? If separate, was it influenced by the earlier poem about Cockaigne?[/li]
[li]In English/American mythos, is there such a place? I’ve heard the phrase “land of plenty” (prior to the seminal Land Down Under by Men at Work), but never really thought of it as a place as much as just a saying. I did find one cite that suggested that the American equivalent is the Big Rock Candy Mountain.[/li]
[li]What is really in Schlaraffenland and how would one get there?[/li][/ul]

[Colibri]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ShibbOleth *
** [li]In English/American mythos, is there such a place? I’ve heard the phrase “land of plenty” (prior to the seminal Land Down Under by Men at Work), but never really thought of it as a place as much as just a saying. I did find one cite that suggested that the American equivalent is the Big Rock Candy Mountain.**[/li][/QUOTE]

Yes, the Big Rock Candy Mountain would be the American equivalent:

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
You never change your socks
And little streams of alkyhol
Come trickling down the rocks
O the shacks all have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There’s a lake of stew
And whiskey too
And you can paddle
All around it in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
The cops have wooden legs
The bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmer’s trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
I’m bound to go
Where there ain’t no snow
Where the sleet don’t fall
And the winds don’t blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

Chorus:
Oh the buzzin’ of the bees
In the cigarette trees
Near the soda water fountain
At the lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
On the big rock candy mountain

Another such place is Diddy-Wah-Diddy, which recently came up on another thread:

Another explanation comes from folklorist B. A. Botkin, in A Treasury of Southern Folklore. Under the heading, Mythical Places of the Florida Negro, the following definition is presented for the phrase Diddie Wa Diddie (Diddy- Wah-Diddy).

This is the largest and best known of the Negro mythical places. Its geography is that it is “way off somewhere.” It is reached by a road that curves so much that a mule pulling a wagon-load of fodder can eat off the back of the wagon as he goes. It is a place of no work and no worry for man and beast. A very restful place where even the curbstones are good sitting- chairs. The food is even already cooked. If a traveller is hungry all he needs do is to sit down on the curbstone and wait and soon he will hear something hollering “Eat me! Eat me! Eat me!” and a big baked chicken will come along with a knife and a fork stuck in its sides. He can eat all he wants and let the chicken go on to the next on that needs something to eat. By that time a big deep sweet potato pie is pushing and shoving to get in front of the traveller with a knife all stuck up in the middle of it so he just cuts a piece off of that and so on until he finishes his snack. Nobody can ever eat it all up. No matter how much you eat it grows that much faster.

Another such paradise, this one for sailors, is Fiddler’s Green.

[Colibri]

More on Fiddler’s Green.

They say that an old salt who is tired of seagoing should walk inland with an oar over his shoulder. When he comes to a pretty little village deep in the country and the people ask him what he is carrying…he will know that he’s found Fiddlers Green. The people give him a seat in the sun outside the Village Inn with a glass of grog that refills itself every time he drains the last drop and a pipe forever smoking with fragrant tobacco. From then onwards he has nothing to do but enjoy his glass and pipe and watch the maidens dancing to the music of a fiddle on Fiddlers Green.

[capybara]

Well, in a 16th c painting, Pieter Breugel uses a mountain of porridge, there’s a house shingled with pancakes, a pig runs around with a knife already in him (think Simpsons), an egg-cup is running around on legs with a spoon stuck in his head, and three guys lay on the ground under a table as food just sort of falls off it into their gaping mouths-- hamhocks and such. describing this from memory, so sorry about details. He also includes one guy who is just finishing tunneling in through the mountain with a spoon as is looking about agog.

[CalMeacham]

Capybara beat me to it. I’m a big Breughel fan. This painting exists as an engraving, too (see The Graphic Worlds of Pieter Breughel the Elder by H. Arthur Klein). A couple of minor quibbles – the guy who’s just tunneled into The Land of Cockaigne doesn’t have a look of wonder on his face – he;s facing away from the viewerr as he grabs a branch to pull himself through. It’s an empty eggshell with a fork in it (and walking on two legs), not an eggcup. In the background thee’s a cooked goose flying into the mouth of a knight.

Here’s a picture:

http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~emartin/food/bruegel/sld018.htm