Merry England

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.

Hutton argued that, far from being pagan survivals, many of the activities of popular piety criticised by sixteenth-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.

[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"[5] 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".

[7][8] 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"[9] all testify (however indirectly) to a vital, if unofficial medieval existence.

[10] 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,[11] belonged to a similar fraternity.

More legitimised recreation came in the form of archery, ice-skating, wrestling, hunting and hawking,[12] while there was also the medieval angler, of whom Juliana Berners wrote: "atte the leest hath his holsom walke and mery at his ease".

[18] The annual festal round in parish society, consolidated between 1350 and 1520[a] and including such customs as church ales, May games, maypoles and local plays, came under severe pressure in Elizabeth's reign.

[21] Religious austerity, opposed to Catholic and pagan hangovers, and economic arguments against idleness, found common ground in attacking communal celebrations.

Unsurprisingly, the Long Parliament put an end to ales, the last of which was held in 1641, and drove Christmas underground, where it was kept privately, as a form of protest; while the Restoration saw the revival of such pastimes (if not on the Sabbath itself) widely and popularly celebrated.

[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).

Today, in a form adapted to political conservatism, the vision of "Merry England" extends to embrace a few urban artisans and other cosmopolitans; a flexible and humane clergy; an interested and altruistic squirearchy, aristocracy and royalty.

For a time, the Merry England vision was a common reference point for rhetorical Tories and utopian socialists, offering similar alternatives to an industrialising society, with its large-scale movement off the land to jerry-built cities and gross social inequality.

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.

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.

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 Lord of the Rings is a pernicious confirmation of the values of a declining nation with a morally bankrupt class whose cowardly self-protection is primarily responsible for the problems England answered with the ruthless logic of Thatcherism.

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.

Sullivan's score consisted of original music mixed with a large number of popular and historical folk tunes, traditional songs and national anthems.

[47] During his heyday, German successfully tapped into and fostered a new enthusiasm for British music in the context of a romanticised Shakespearian or semi mythical "Merrie England".