Merry England
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"Merry England", or in more jocular, archaic spelling "Merrie England", refers to a
Folklorist
Medieval origins
The concept of Merry England originated in the Middle Ages, when
However
The same concept may have also been used to describe a
Even in relatively peaceful times, medieval existence was for the majority a harsh and uncertain one –
More legitimised recreation came in the form of archery, ice-skating, wrestling, hunting and hawking,
Thus there was certainly merriment in Medieval England, even if always 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.[15]
Post-Reformation conflicts
The
However, a reaction quickly set in,
Cultural revivals
At various times since the Middle Ages, authors, propagandists, romanticists, poets and others have revived or co-opted the term. The celebrated Hogarth engraving illustrating the patriotic song "The Roast Beef of Old England" (see illustration), is as anti-French as it is patriotic.[25]
William Hazlitt's essay "Merry England", appended to his Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819),[26] popularised the specific term, introduced in tandem with an allusion to the iconic figure of Robin Hood, under the epigraph "St George for merry England!":
The beams of the morning sun shining on the lonely glades, or through the idle branches of the tangled forest, the leisure, the freedom, 'the pleasure of going and coming without knowing where', the troops of wild deer, the sports of the chase, and other rustic gambols, were sufficient to justify the appelation of 'Merry Sherwood', and in like manner, we may apply the phrase to Merry England.
Hazlitt's subject was the traditional sports and rural diversions native to the English. In Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (1844: translated as The Condition of the Working Class in England), Friedrich Engels wrote sarcastically of Young England (a ginger-group of young aristocrats hostile to the new industrial order) that they hoped to restore "the old 'merry England' with its brilliant features and its romantic feudalism. This object is of course unattainable and ridiculous ..." The phrase "merry England" appears in English in the German text.[27]
William Cobbett provided conservative commentary on the rapidly changing look and mores of an industrialising nation[28] by invoking the stable social hierarchy and prosperous working class of the pre-industrial country of his youth in his Rural Rides (1822–26, collected in book form, 1830). The later works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge also subscribed to some extent to the "Merry England" view. Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present also made the case for Merrie England; the conclusion of Crotchet Castle by Thomas Love Peacock contrasts the mediaevalism of Mr. Chainmail to the contemporary social unrest. Barry Cornwall's patriotic poem. "Hurrah for Merry England", was set twice to music and printed in The Musical Times, in 1861 and 1880.
In the 1830s, the
Children's storybooks and
The London-based
...Can, I ask,
This face of rural beauty be a mask
For discontent, and poverty, and crime?—
These spreading towns a cloak for lawless will?—
Forbid it, Heaven! —that Merry England still
May be thy rightful name, in prose or rhyme.
In the late Victorian era, the Tory
The idea of Merry England became associated on one side with the
Another variant of Merry England was promoted in the organic community of
Punch in 1951 mocked both planning, and the concept of a revived Merry England, by envisioning a 'Merrie Board' with powers to set up 'Merrie Areas' in rural England – intended to preserve "this hard core of Merriment".[31]
Deep England
"Deep England" refers to an idealised view of a rural, Southern England. The term is often used to describe what English
Little England and propaganda
In Angus Calder's re-examination of the ideological constructs surrounding "
Calder cites the writer and broadcaster J. B. Priestley whom he considered to be a proponent of the Deep England world-view. Priestley's wartime BBC radio "chats" described the beauty of the English natural environment, this at a time when rationing was at its height, and the population of London was sheltering from The Blitz in its Underground stations. In reference to one of Priestley's bucolic broadcasts, Calder made the following point:
Priestley, the socialist, gives this cottage no occupant, nor does he wonder about the size of the occupant's wage, nor ask if the cottage has internal sanitation and running water. His countryside only exists as spectacle, for the delectation of people with motor cars." (Angus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz, London 1991)
However, in Journey Through England, Priestley identified himself as a Little Englander because he despised imperialism and the effect that the capitalist industrial revolution had on the people and environment.
Part of the imagery of the 1940 patriotic song "There'll Always Be an England" seems to be derived from the same source:
There'll always be an England
While there's a country lane,
Wherever there's a cottage small
Beside a field of grain.
The continuation evokes, however, the opposite image of the modern industrialised society:
There'll always be an England
While there's a busy street,
Wherever there's a turning wheel,
A million marching feet.
The song seems therefore to offer a synthesis and combine the two Englands, the archaic bucolic one and the modern industrialised one, in the focus of patriotic loyalty and veneration.
Literature and the arts
The transition from a literary locus of Merry England to a more obviously political one cannot be placed before 1945, as the cited example of J. B. Priestley shows. Writers and artists described as having a Merry England viewpoint range from the radical visionary poet William Blake to the evangelical Christian Arthur Mee. The Rudyard Kipling of Puck of Pook's Hill is certainly one; when he wrote it, he was in transition towards his later, very conservative stance. Within art, the fabled long-lost merrie England was also a recurring theme in the Victorian-era paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The 1890 News from Nowhere by William Morris portrays a future England that has reverted to a rural idyll following a socialist revolution.
Reference points might be taken as children's writer
In his essay "Epic Pooh", Michael Moorcock opined:
The little hills and woods of that
morally bankrupt class whose cowardly self-protection is primarily responsible for the problems England answered with the ruthless logic of Thatcherism. Humanity was derided and marginalised. Sentimentality became the acceptable substitute. So few people seem to be able to tell the difference.
It began in the old and golden days of England, in a time when all the hedgerows were green and the roads dusty, when hawthorn and wild roses bloomed, when big-bellied landlords brewed October ale at a penny a pint ...
The novel England, England by Julian Barnes describes an imaginary, though plausible, set of circumstances that cause modern England to return to the state of Deep England. The author's views are not made explicit, but the characters who choose to remain in the changed nation are treated more sympathetically than those who leave.
In Kingsley Amis's novel Lucky Jim, Professor Welch and his friends are devotees of the Merry England legend, and Jim's "Merrie England" lecture somehow turns into a debunking of the whole concept (a position almost certainly reflecting that of Amis).
Richmal Crompton's William the Bad [1930] contains a chapter, "The Pennymans Hand On The Torch", about an idealist couple who wish to return to Merrie England, as a staging post towards their ideal of living at "the morning of the world", which means dressing in flowing robes and (incongruously with the Merrie England concept, bearing in mind the traditions of English Ale and The Roast Beef Of Old England) being vegetarian and teetotal. The pageant they organise becomes a fiasco, largely, needless to say, on account of William's involvement as part of the dragon who fights Mr Pennyman's St George. "The Pennymans'... pageant for May Day which involves St George and the Dragon ... proves to be the first time ever that the Dragon (played by William) ever came out on top in the conflict".[45]
Music
Eric Saylor traces Arcadian antecedents in English pastoral music back to 18th century works such as Handel's Acis and Galatea (1718, text by John Gay), which remained a mainstay of English choral festivals throughout the 19th century. Arthur Sullivan's Iolanthe (1882) made use of pastoral conventions.[46] His ballet Victoria and Merrie England, produced for the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897, consisted of a series of scenes depicting idealised versions of British mythology and past eras typical of Merry England, including a country village celebrating May Day in Elizabethan times and Christmas during the Restoration. The final scenes were recreations of Victoria's coronation and a celebration of the British Empire, tying the contemporary world of 1897 back to the popular idealised world of Merry England. Sullivan's score consisted of original music mixed with a large number of popular and historical folk tunes, traditional songs and national anthems. The ballet was very popular, running continuously for nearly six months.
Other composers, such as
A few popular music artists have used elements of the Merry England story as recurring themes.
See also
Notes
- ^ Roy Judge, "May Day and Merrie England" Folklore 102.2 (1991, pp. 131–148) p 131.
- ^ G. C. Coulton, Medieval Panorama (Cambridge 1938) p. 65
- ^ Quoted in G. C. Coulton, Medieval Panorama (Cambridge 1938) p. 65
- ^ Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merrie England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700.
- ^ Tom Hodgkinson, The Guardian, 17 November 2006 – "Hutton's work confirms my belief that Britain was a merrier place before the Puritans came along with their black hats and hatred of fun. Merry England was not a myth. They really did used to dance around the maypole, feast all day and drink beer all night. And not only was it more merry, the merry-making was actually encouraged by the Church, particularly in the later medieval period. This was because the Church had realised that merry-making could be a source of funds – the profits of the bar went to church upkeep – and also because it helped bind communities."
- ^ Quoted in J. B. Bury ed, The Cambridge Medieval History Vol VII (Cambridge 1932) p. 739
- ^ Quoted in J. H. Hexter, On Historians (London 1979) p. 155
- ^ E. Duffy, Th stripping of the Altars (London 1992) p. 42;L. Marcus, The Politic of Mirth (London 1989) pp. 6–7
- ^ G. C. Coulton, Medieval Panorama (Cambridge 1938) pp. 95, 192, 83
- ^ J. F. Goodridge ed., Piers the Ploughman (Penguin 1966) pp. 41, 84
- ^ H. Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (Fontana 1968) p. 195
- ^ D. Baker ed., The Early Middle Ages (London 1966) p. 236
- ^ Juliana Berners, quoted in G. C. Coulton, Medieval Panorama (Cambridge 1938) p. 596
- ^ S Greenblatt, Will in the World (London 2005) pp. 39–40
- ^ G. M. Trevelyan, History of England (London 1926) pp. 242, 283
- ^ L. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth (London 1989) p. 23
- ^ E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Alatars (London 1992) p. 394
- ^ J. Shapiro, 1599 (London 2005) p. 168
- ^ R. Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford 1994) Ch II. For methodological criticism, see however Katherine L. French, The Sixteenth Century Journal (1995), 247–248
- ^ R. Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford 1994) pp. 118–122
- ^ G. Semenza, Sport, Politics, and Literature in the English Renaissance (2003) p. 40
- ^ Quoted in R. Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford 1994) p. 89
- ^ L. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth (London 1989) p. 3
- ^ G. Semenza, Sport, Politics, and Literature in the English Renaissance (2003) p. 210
- ^ Tate. "'O the Roast Beef of Old England ('The Gate of Calais')', William Hogarth, 1748". Tate. Retrieved 24 January 2024.
- ^ It was often reprinted in collections of Hazlitt's essays, and, tellingly, included in Ernest Rhys' compilation of sentimental patriotism The Old Country: a Book of Love and Praise of England, first published in 1917, as the First World War was coming to an end, and republished in 1922.
- ^ "Friedrich Engels – Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England – Die Stellung der Bourgeoisie zum Proletariat". Retrieved 6 October 2014.
- ^ William Sambrook, William Cobbett (1973), ch. I "Merry England?"
- ^ Jason D. Martinek. 'The Workingman's Bible": 'Robert Blatchford's "Merrie England", Radical Literacy, and the Making of Debsian Socialism, 1895-1900', in New Perspectives on Socialism I (July 2003), pp. 326-346
- ISBN 978-0-521-22324-9
- ^ Quoted in D. Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London 2016) p. 368
- ^
Leach, Jim (30 August 2004). British Film – Google Book Search. ISBN 9780521654197. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^ Murray, Douglas (16 December 2023). "In search of deep England". The Spectator. Retrieved 23 April 2024.
- ^
Hughes, Helen (14 January 2004). The Historical Romance – Google Book Search. ISBN 9780203168028. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^
Wild, Trevor (26 February 2004). Village England: A Social History of ... – Google Book Search. ISBN 9781860649394. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^
Westwood, Sallie; Williams, John (19 June 2004). Imagining Cities: Scripts, Signs, Memory – Google Book Search. ISBN 9780203397350. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^
Garrity, Jane (2003). Step-daughters of England: British ... – Google Book Search. ISBN 9780719061646. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^
Walker, Ian (2007). So Exotic, So Homemade: Surrealism ... – Google Book Search. ISBN 9780719073403. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^
Williams, Richard J.; Williams, Dick (2004). The Anxious City: English Urbanism ... – Google Book Search. ISBN 9780415279260. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^
Melman, Billie (22 June 2006). The Culture of History: English Uses ... – Google Book Search. ISBN 9780199296880. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^
Hughes, Helen (14 January 2004). The Historical Romance – Google Book Search. ISBN 9780203168028. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^
Walker, Ian (2007). So Exotic, So Homemade: Surrealism ... – Google Book Search. ISBN 9780719073403. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^
Baker, Brian (2007). Iain Sinclair – Google Book Search. ISBN 9780719069055. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^ D. Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London 2016) p. 276
- ^ Pip. "Just William". Retrieved 6 October 2014.
- ^ Saylor, Eric. English Pastoral Music: From Arcadia to Utopia, 1900-1955 (2017), Chapter 2
- ^ Hulme, David Russell. "German: Richard III / Theme and Six Diversions / The Seasons", Marco Polo/Naxos liner notes, 1994
- ^ BBC Proms Performance Archive
- ^ Poston, Lawrence. 'Henry Wood, the "Proms," and National Identity in Music, 1895–1904', in Victorian Studies, Volume 47 No 3, Spring 2005, p 412
- ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. AllMusic.
Further reading
- ISBN 0-19-285447-X.
- ISBN 9781482075113.
- Simmons, Clare. Medievalist Traditions in Nineteenth-Century British Culture. Boydell & Brewer (2021).
- ISBN 0-86091-833-5. Chapter 2, esp. pp. 81–87.
External links
- "Epic Pooh" by Michael Moorcock, a critique of this world-view in fantasy fiction.
- "Deep England" by Paul Watson—an introduction to the concept of Deep England
- Joseph Behar, "Citizenship and Control: The Case of St. Helenian Agricultural Workers in the UK, 1949–1951". Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d'histoire 33, April 1998, pp. 49–73. ISSN 0008-4107.
- Happy England as Painted by Helen Allingham, R.W.S. on Google Books