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Merry England
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Merry England
"Merry England", or in more jocular, archaic spelling "Merrie England", refers to a utopian conception of English society and culture based on an idyllic pastoral way of life that was allegedly prevalent in early modern Britain at some time between the Middle Ages and the onset of the Industrial Revolution. More broadly, it connotes a putative essential Englishness with nostalgic overtones, incorporating such cultural symbols as the thatched cottage, the country inn and the Sunday roast.
Folklorist Roy Judge has described the concept as "a world that has never actually existed, a visionary, mythical landscape, where it is difficult to take normal historical bearings." It may be treated both as a product of the sentimental nostalgic imagination and as an ideological or political construct, often underwriting various sorts of conservative world-views. Favourable perceptions of Merry England reveal a nostalgia for aspects of an earlier society that are missing in modern times.
The concept of Merry England originated in the Middle Ages, when Henry of Huntingdon around 1150 first coined the phrase Anglia plena jocis. His theme was taken up in the following century by the encyclopedist Bartholomeus Anglicus, who claimed that "England is full of mirth and of game, and men oft-times able to mirth and game".
However Ronald Hutton's study of churchwardens' accounts places the real consolidation of "Merry England" between 1350 and 1520, with the newly elaborative annual festive round of the liturgical year, with candles and pageants, processions and games, boy bishops and decorated rood lofts. Hutton argues that, far from being pagan survivals, many of the activities of popular piety criticised by 16th-century reformers were actually creations of the later Middle Ages: "Merry England" thus reflects those historical aspects of rural English customs and folklore that were subsequently lost.
The same concept may have been used to describe a utopian state of life that peasants aspired to lead (see Cockaigne).[citation needed] Peasant revolts, such as those led by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, invoked a visionary idea that was also egalitarian – John Ball arguing for "wines, spices, and good bread ... velvet and camlet furred with grise" all to be held in common. Tyler's rebels wished to throw off the feudal aristocracy (though the term "Norman yoke" belongs to a later period) and return to a perceived time where the Saxons ruled in equality and freedom. The main arguments of Tyler's rebels were that there was no basis for aristocratic rule in the Bible, and that the Plague had demonstrated by its indiscriminate nature that all people were equal under God.
Even in relatively peaceful times, medieval existence was for the majority a harsh and uncertain one – Lawrence Stone describing rural life as "at the mercy of disease and the weather ... with money to burn today from the sale of a bumper crop, plunged into debt tomorrow because of harvest failure". Nevertheless, the rural community was clearly prepared to play hard as well as work hard (even if much of the surviving evidence for this comes in the form of official censure, ecclesiastical or secular). The festival calendar provided some 50 holy days for seasonal and communal coming-together and merry-making. Complaints against the rise in levels of drunkenness and crime on holidays, of flirting in church or on pilgrimage, of grievous bodily harm from the "abominable enough ... foot-ball-game" all testify (however indirectly) to a vital, if unofficial medieval existence. The 14th-century English poet Langland might castigate, but he also provides a vivid picture of those who "drink all day in diverse taverns, and gossip and joke there", of the field-workers who "sat down to drink their ale and sing songs – thinking to plough his field with a 'Hey-nonny-nonny'". The wandering scholar, or goliard, who posed the mock questions of whether it was better to eat meat or fish, to court Agnes or Rose, belonged to a similar fraternity.
More legitimised recreation came in the form of archery, ice-skating, wrestling, hunting and hawking, while there was also the medieval angler, of whom Juliana Berners wrote: "atte the leest hath his holsom walke and mery at his ease". Towns had nomadic entertainers—minstrels, jugglers, mummers, morris-dancers, actors and jig-makers— all adding to first stirrings of mass entertainment.
Thus there was certainly merriment in medieval England, even if found in an unidealised and conflictual social setting. If there was a period after the Black Death when labour shortages meant that agricultural workers were in stronger positions, and serfdom was consequently eroded, the growing commercialisation of agriculture – with enclosures, rising rents, and pasture displacing arable, and sheep displacing men – meant that such social and economic hardship and conflict continued in the countryside through into Tudor times.
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Merry England
"Merry England", or in more jocular, archaic spelling "Merrie England", refers to a utopian conception of English society and culture based on an idyllic pastoral way of life that was allegedly prevalent in early modern Britain at some time between the Middle Ages and the onset of the Industrial Revolution. More broadly, it connotes a putative essential Englishness with nostalgic overtones, incorporating such cultural symbols as the thatched cottage, the country inn and the Sunday roast.
Folklorist Roy Judge has described the concept as "a world that has never actually existed, a visionary, mythical landscape, where it is difficult to take normal historical bearings." It may be treated both as a product of the sentimental nostalgic imagination and as an ideological or political construct, often underwriting various sorts of conservative world-views. Favourable perceptions of Merry England reveal a nostalgia for aspects of an earlier society that are missing in modern times.
The concept of Merry England originated in the Middle Ages, when Henry of Huntingdon around 1150 first coined the phrase Anglia plena jocis. His theme was taken up in the following century by the encyclopedist Bartholomeus Anglicus, who claimed that "England is full of mirth and of game, and men oft-times able to mirth and game".
However Ronald Hutton's study of churchwardens' accounts places the real consolidation of "Merry England" between 1350 and 1520, with the newly elaborative annual festive round of the liturgical year, with candles and pageants, processions and games, boy bishops and decorated rood lofts. Hutton argues that, far from being pagan survivals, many of the activities of popular piety criticised by 16th-century reformers were actually creations of the later Middle Ages: "Merry England" thus reflects those historical aspects of rural English customs and folklore that were subsequently lost.
The same concept may have been used to describe a utopian state of life that peasants aspired to lead (see Cockaigne).[citation needed] Peasant revolts, such as those led by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, invoked a visionary idea that was also egalitarian – John Ball arguing for "wines, spices, and good bread ... velvet and camlet furred with grise" all to be held in common. Tyler's rebels wished to throw off the feudal aristocracy (though the term "Norman yoke" belongs to a later period) and return to a perceived time where the Saxons ruled in equality and freedom. The main arguments of Tyler's rebels were that there was no basis for aristocratic rule in the Bible, and that the Plague had demonstrated by its indiscriminate nature that all people were equal under God.
Even in relatively peaceful times, medieval existence was for the majority a harsh and uncertain one – Lawrence Stone describing rural life as "at the mercy of disease and the weather ... with money to burn today from the sale of a bumper crop, plunged into debt tomorrow because of harvest failure". Nevertheless, the rural community was clearly prepared to play hard as well as work hard (even if much of the surviving evidence for this comes in the form of official censure, ecclesiastical or secular). The festival calendar provided some 50 holy days for seasonal and communal coming-together and merry-making. Complaints against the rise in levels of drunkenness and crime on holidays, of flirting in church or on pilgrimage, of grievous bodily harm from the "abominable enough ... foot-ball-game" all testify (however indirectly) to a vital, if unofficial medieval existence. The 14th-century English poet Langland might castigate, but he also provides a vivid picture of those who "drink all day in diverse taverns, and gossip and joke there", of the field-workers who "sat down to drink their ale and sing songs – thinking to plough his field with a 'Hey-nonny-nonny'". The wandering scholar, or goliard, who posed the mock questions of whether it was better to eat meat or fish, to court Agnes or Rose, belonged to a similar fraternity.
More legitimised recreation came in the form of archery, ice-skating, wrestling, hunting and hawking, while there was also the medieval angler, of whom Juliana Berners wrote: "atte the leest hath his holsom walke and mery at his ease". Towns had nomadic entertainers—minstrels, jugglers, mummers, morris-dancers, actors and jig-makers— all adding to first stirrings of mass entertainment.
Thus there was certainly merriment in medieval England, even if found in an unidealised and conflictual social setting. If there was a period after the Black Death when labour shortages meant that agricultural workers were in stronger positions, and serfdom was consequently eroded, the growing commercialisation of agriculture – with enclosures, rising rents, and pasture displacing arable, and sheep displacing men – meant that such social and economic hardship and conflict continued in the countryside through into Tudor times.
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