[Start Wikipedia]Cockaigne, or Cockayne, was a mythical medieval land of plenty, where all the harshness of medieval peasant life did not exist. The word Cockaigne derives from Middle English cokaygne, traced to Middle French (païs de) cocaigne"(land of) plenty," ultimately adapted or derived from a word for a small sweet cake sold to children at a fair (OED). The Dutch equivalent is Luilekkerland ("lazy luscious land"), and the German equivalent is Schlaraffenland (also known as "land of milk and honey"). In Spain, where cucaña is the cognate word for "fool" [according to my Oxford Spanish Dictionary, cucaña: greasy pole, piece of cake, soft or cushy job, bargain], an equivalent place of Cockaigne is named Jauja, after a rich mining region of the Andes.In the 1820s, the name Cockaigne came to be applied jocularly to London, as the land of Cockneys, and thus "Cockaigne", though the two aren't linguistically connected otherwise. The composer Edward Elgar used the title "Cockaigne" for his overture (1901) and suite evoking the people of London.The Dutch village Kockengen [part of Breukelen, for which Brooklyn, a Cockaigne if ever there was one, was named] was named after Cockaigne.[End Wikipedia]Pieter Bruegel the Elder's "The Land of Cockaigne," painted in 1567, is currently in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, GermanyFrom Baudelaire's "L'Invitation au Voyage": Il est un pays superbe, un pays de Cocagne. . .un vrai pays de Cocagne, où tout est beau, riche, tranquille, honnête; où le luxe a plaisir à se mirer dans l'ordre; où la vie est grasse et douce à respirer; d'où le désordre, la turbulence et l'imprévu sont exclus; où le bonheur est marié au silence. . . .