page_title: Cockaigne
section_title: Traditions
hierarchical_section_title: Cockaigne / Traditions
context_page_description: Cockaigne or Cockayne 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, it is a land of contraries, where all the restrictions of society are defied, sexual liberty is open, and food is plentiful. Writing about Cockaigne was commonplace in Goliard verse. It represented both wish fulfillment and resentment at the strictures of asceticism and dearth.
context_section_description: A Neapolitan tradition, extended to other Latin-culture countries, is the Cockaigne pole (Italian: 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.
caption: Francisco Goya: La cucaña ("The Greasy Pole", c. 1786)
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