The Legend of Lady Godiva

Author(s): H. R. Ellis Davidson

Source: Folklore , Summer, 1969, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Summer, 1969), pp. 107-121
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1258463

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 The Legend of Lady Godiva'
by H. R. ELLIS DAVIDSON

THE legend of Godiva was recalled to our minds and flared up

for a while in the press in 1967, when the City of Coventry
celebrated the 9ooth anniversary of her death. It is a legend which
offers a challenge both to historian and folklorist, for the problem
it presents is that of the relationship between historical events,
written records and popular tradition. It is the more complicated
- and the more interesting for us - because the folklore does
not end with the Middle Ages, but has continued to develop in
Coventry up to the present day. For all the Godiva Cafes and
Cinemas, and the small, flesh-pink figure on a horse which rushes
madly round the balcony in the main square every time the clock
sounds the hour, there is something here beyond mere com-
mercialism. The eleventh-century Godiva is still reverenced by
the people as a great lady, the founder and benefactor of their city,
whose story should not be doubted or tampered with. In the
Godiva legend we have a complex and fascinating problem of folk
tradition, to which this paper offers no more than an introduction;
much further remains to be done.
First, Godiva is no mere figure of legend; we know a good deal
about her, although there are tantalizing gaps in our knowledge.
She was a great lady who ruled Coventry in her own right, the
wife of the mighty Earl Leofric of Mercia. Her husband was one
of the four great magnates of England, chosen by the Danish
1 I wish to make special acknowledgement here to the work of Miss Joan
Lancaster on the historical evidence for Godiva and for references to her ride
in local records, on which I have drawn freely in the early part of this paper.
She has published the detailed evidence in Godiva of Coventry, the first of the
Coventry Papers, published by Coventry Corporation in 1967. I was invited to
contribute a chapter to this on The Ride: in Folk Tradition, and in my researches
for this, and further work done since on the surviving figures of Peeping Tom,
I would like to repeat the acknowledgements given in the preface of the help
given by the Director and Officials of the Herbert Museum and Art Gallery and
the Library. I am particularly grateful for the help given by Miss Alice Lynes,
the Librarian of the Coventry and Warwickshire Collection, from her wide
knowledge of local records, as well as by various individuals mentioned below.
107

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

king Cnut to rule over the kingdom which his

conquered, and the only one of the four to com
Saxon ruling family, since Leofric's father had
Mercia. Cnut was no Norman William, break
customs and imposing a harsh rule on a rebellio
wise and tolerant and brought a time of peace a
England, unfortunately all too brief. He clearl
friendship and trusted him as a responsibl
counsellor. The monastic chroniclers all praise L
while at first he seems to have been hostile tow
he became one of its outstanding benefactors. L
had as their friend and confessor a wise and s
AEfic, the Benedictine Prior of Evesham, and it
late in his life Leofric had a series of mystical
had a great effect on him. Several dreams or v
recorded, and one of them is especially interes
that he dreamed that he was crossing, in great ter
bridge over the abyss which is well known in fo
logy, and this bridge led him to heaven, wher
blessing his celestial congregation. He heard one
this foul man, Leofric, was doing among them,
replied that he might join them yet, as he had
his sins and would be among them in a certa
apparently foretelling the date of Leofric's dea
this dream, which is found in a MS. written at W
I100, is perhaps not wholly irrelevant to the sto
I shall return to it later.
Godiva herself is praised by all as a wise, dev
lady, famed for her princely gifts to the church,
to the Virgin Mary, and for her building of Ho
near Evesham and founding of the Abbey at C
first religious house there had been destroyed b
owned extensive estates in six Midland counties,
these came to her as family property or as gifts f
we do not know. Her most valuable possessio
2 A. S. Napier, 'An O.E. vision of Leofric Earl of M
Trans. (i908), pp. I80-7, taken from MS. no. 367 at Cor
Cambridge.
3 Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Warw
shire and Gloucestershire, all in Mercian territory.
Io8

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

which in io86, soon after her death, consis

families owning farms or small holdings, as w
serfs. She was Lady of Coventry in her own ri
her husband appear to have spent at least part of
and are said to be buried there, Leofric in 105
Io September, 1067. We know this date through
of Miss Joan Lancaster, who found a page from
in the Bodleian, giving a list of anniversary dat
the Abbey.4 When excavations took place on th
Abbey in 1967 it was hoped that Godiva's buria
found, but the thirteenth-century builders of S
above the Saxon church had done their work too well.
The story of Godiva's ride has been recorded by several Latin
chroniclers, the earliest of them Roger of Wendover in the
twelfth century and Matthew Paris in the early thirteenth. Both
these men were monks at St Albans Abbey, set at an important
road junction and therefore well placed for the collection of news
and travellers' tales. Miss Lancaster judges Roger's version most
reliable, and her translation runs as follows :5
The saintly countess ... desiring to free the town of Coventry from its
burdensome and shameful servitude, often besought the earl, her
husband, with earnest prayers, to free the town, by the guidance of the
Holy Trinity and of the Holy Mother of God, from this slavery. The
earl upbraided her for vainly seeking something so injurious to him
and repeatedly forbade her to approach him again on the subject.
Nevertheless in her feminine pertinacity she exasperated her husband
with her unceasing request and extorted from him the following reply:
'Mount your horse naked' he said 'and ride through the market place
of the town from one side right to the other while the people are con-
gregated, and when you return you shall claim what you desire.' And
the countess answered: 'And if I wish to do this, will you give me your
permission?' And the earl said: 'I will.' Then the Countess Godiva,
beloved of God, on a certain day, as it is said, mounting her horse
naked, loosed her hair from its bands and her whole body was
veiled except her fair white legs. Her journey done, unseen by a soul,
4 The book had belonged to Coventry Priory and passed into the hands of
Robert Cotton and later of Francis Douce. The latter gave most of the docu-
ments to Thomas Sharp, and they were given to Birmingham Reference
Library, where they were destroyed in the fire of 1879. Douce's own book,
however, went to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the first page of the
statute book was left in this.
6 j. C. Lancaster, Godiva of Coventry (Coventry, I967), pp. 44-5.
og09

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

she returned rejoicing to her husband, who counted it

Earl Leofric granted a charter freeing the city of Co
servitude and confirmed it with his seal.

Of considerable interest too is a sixteenth-ce

version6 by Richard Grafton, a Coventry printer
parliament for the town in the early years of the re
I. He says that his story comes from an earlier sou
be a lost thirteenth-century work by Prior Geoffrey

Gaufride sayth that this gentle and good Lady did n

freeing of the said Citie and satisfying of her hu
graunt unto her sayde Husband to ryde as aforesayde
in secret maner (by such as she put speciall trust in) a
were Magistrates and rulers of the sayde Citie of
vttered vnto them what good will she bare vnto the
how shee had moued the Erle her husband to make t
which vpon such condition as is afore mencioned,
graunted vnto her, which the sayde Lady was well co
requiring of them for the reuerence of womanhed, th
tyme that she should ride (which was made certaine
streight commaundement should be geuen throughou
that euerie person should shut in their houses and
none so hardy to looke out into the streetes, nor remay
vpon a great paine, so that when the tyme came of her
sawe her, but her husbande and such as were present w
and her Gentlewoman to wayte vpon her galoped thor
where the people might here the treading of their Hor
her not, and so she returned to her Husbande to the pl
she came, her honestie saued, her purpose obteyne
much commended, and her husbands imagination vtt
And shortly after her returne, when shee had arayed
her selfe in most comely and seemely maner, then sh
selfe openly to the people of the Citie of Couentrie, to
maruellous reioysing of all the Citizens and inhabitan
who by her had receyued so great a benefite.

No mention as yet, it may be noted, of Peeping

more will be said later.
There are other references to Godiva's achievement in freeing
Coventry from taxes. One is an inscription on a fifteenth-century
6 Richard Grafton, Chronicle or History of England (1569), reproduced by
Sir Henry Ellis, London, 1809, pp. 147-8.
IIO

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

window of Holy Trinity Church in Coventr

Godiva and Leofric, with the words:
I Luriche, for love of thee
Doe make Coventrie toll-free.

Another occurred in a doggerel rhyme which was pinned to the

door of St Michael's Church by local rebels in 1495, complaining
of unjust taxes, when Godiva, here called Dame Goode Eve, had
made the town free.8 There was clearly an early and well-established
tradition that Godiva was responsible for persuading her husband
to release the people from an unpopular tax. Now most taxes in
Coventry would be Godiva's own responsibility, as overlord, but
there was one royal tax, the detested Heregeld, which in Cnut's
time went to pay for the king's bodyguard, and this would be
collected by Leofric as Earl of Mercia. This tax was finally
repealed by Edward the Confessor in 1051, but some time before
this the Earls had power to grant relief from it, as happened at
Bury St Edmunds.9 Thus there is nothing inherently improbable
in a tradition that Leofric released Coventry from payment of a
tax at his wife's request. Moreover we know from the record of his
heavenly vision that Leofric had a change of heart, not very long
before his death in 1057, and also that he atoned for former harsh
treatment of the church, giving back lands that he and his family
had taken from Evesham Abbey. It seems to me a possibility at
least that the story of Godiva's ride might have been based on
some symbolic act of penance which she performed on her
husband's behalf, perhaps even passing through Coventry as a
penitent, not indeed naked but stripped of her marks of rank.
The memory of some such act, linked with that of the remission
of a tax through her influence, could account for the story as
known to Roger of Wendover little more than a century after
Godiva's death.
Certainly from the outset the story has been influenced by
folklore. We shall see how this has happened in the later addition
of Peeping Tom, to be discussed below. The early versions already

' W. Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire (London, 1656), p. 86; Thamas

Sharp, History and Antiquities of the City of Coventry, 1816-17 (ed. W. G.
Fretton, privately printed, Birmingham, I871).
8 Leet Book, 567.
SF. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), pp. 158-9.
III

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

show resemblances to various familiar folk motifs. First there is

the story of the dutiful wife who performs some humiliating task
at the bidding of a tyrant husband in order to benefit the common
people. At Dunster in Somerset it was said that the wife of a great
lord was promised as much land for the people as she could walk
round barefoot in a day.10 Sir Roger of Tichborne was reputed to
carry the sport of wife-baiting still further: his dying wife was
required to crawl round as much land as she could encompass
while the torch he held in his hand remained alight, in order to
win the piece of land which later provided the Tichborne Dole."
This type of story seems to have grown up to account for some
ancient custom, and the Tichborne story might have been inspired
by the place name 'The Crawls' or 'Crawley', which in fact is
said to be derived from Croweleainga Mearce, Crows' Lea.
Secondly, there are folktales of a clever wife or maid who fulfils
seemingly impossible conditions. The Scandinavian heroine
Aslaug, reputed daughter of Sigurd the Volsung, was challenged
by Ragnar Lothbrok to come to him neither clothed nor naked,
and the ingenious girl achieved this by wrapping herself in a
fishing net, or, in other versions of this very widespread tale,
covering herself, like Godiva, in her long thick hair.'2
Thirdly, there are tales of a noble heroine miraculously saved
from shame. Some of the early accounts make the point that it
seemed miraculous to Leofric that his wife rode unseen by anyone,
although in Richard Grafton's version this is accounted for in a
rational way, by good organization and by the devotion which the
people felt for their Lady. The most interesting folktale parallel
is one quoted by the German scholar Liebricht from the Punjab:13
a human sacrifice was needed to break a spell preventing the
people of Chamba from building a canal, and a noble princess
volunteered to ride naked along a road and to be beheaded at the
end of it. As she set out, a line of trees sprang up miraculously on
either side to hide her from view. There are less dramatic examples

10 M. Dormer Harris, The Story of Coventry (London, 1911), p. 22; H. C.

Maxwell-Lyte, Dunster and its Lords (privately printed 1882), pp. I9-20o.
11 B. B. Woodward, etc. A General History of Hampshire (London, i861-9),
vol. I, p. I7.
12 J. de Vries, 'Die MArchen von klugen R~itsell6sen', Folklore Fellows Comm.
(Helsinki, 1928), 82zc.
13 E. Liebricht, Zur Volkskunde (Heilbronn, 1879), p. 105. Cf. E. S. Hartland,
The Science of Fairy Tales (London, 1891), pp. 79 ff.
II2

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

from the Arabian Nights of a lady riding unve

and of the ruler commanding all the inhabitan
their houses on pain of death, so that her face
Claims have been made that here we have m
Christian tradition of the ritual ride of a nake
subject a great deal of nonsense has been wr
extremely flimsy foundations. The claims of R
the story was based on pagan ritual continuin
the eleventh century and whitewashed by the
blameless story of Godiva seem to me to be n
the product of a romantic and uncritical imag
turn to the tradition of the May Riding of
company led by a lady on a white horse ac
cavalier on a black,15 there does not seem to b
of veiled nakedness; on the contrary the lady
gaily adorned as befits the spring season. E
periods provide no direct evidence of a naked
horseback. Small figures of a driving goddess
Denmark, dated 500 years B.c. or earlier, are
clad in mini-skirt and necklace;16 as for the
beloved of the Graves school, who was said by
century A.D. to parade through parts of Denm
wagon, we have no right to assume that the wago
her presence held a naked priestess or the anth
of a female deity; on the contrary what we k
symbolism at this time suggests that she was
represented by an abstract symbol or in anim
been made also of various fertility rites, when m
naked through fields at night to make the crop
streams to make the rain come, or take part
monies, the removal of shoes and clothes makin
man and the earth more potent. But here I ca
basis for the Godiva legend. Nor indeed shoul
there was anything necessarily pagan in the st
the Anglo-Saxon or medieval mind. It was t
century Abbess of Romsey that she showed her sa
14 R. Graves, The White Goddess (London, I948), p. 40
15 W. Potts, Banbury Cross and the Rhyme (Banbury
History of Banbury (Banbury, 1958), pp. I25-7.
16 H. R. Ellis Davidson, Pagan Scandinavia (London,
H 113

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

naked in a stream at night while she recited the pr

the day;"1 those who praised her memory evident
shocking either in her ascetism, which horrifies us, o
which might have upset the Victorians.
While I would not support the suggestion tha
Godiva's ride has originated either in a folk tale or
rite of pre-Christian origin, I would however emp
that the Coventry processions of a later date
preserve and develop the folklore about Godiva
Ages the Coventry Great Fair was a flourishing ins
eight days, and including the performance of the M
the guilds as part of the procession of Corpus Chr
summer season. After the dissolution of the
reformation of the English church, the yearly pro
survived was a sober and restricted affair. But afte
and the Protectorate came the restoration of Char
the Fair was revived once more with elaborate
1678 the City Companies were represented by boy
itself by two boys and a standard-bearer, while one bo
Lady Godiva as the founder of Coventry. As time
figures were added to the procession: black gua
St George, reputed to have been born in Coventry
as a Protestant champion; Jason with a golden fleec
the wool trade; Punchinello on a war camel for no
a young elephant, inspired by the elephant and cas
Arms, and other gimmicks from time to time acco
temporary fashion, to attract the crowds. The Mayo
City officials also took part, while small childr
'followers'. were included in the procession, some
they had to be strapped into basket seats on their m
much competition among the townspeople to get th
included among their number. But from 1765 o
Godiva was represented by a lady on a white horse,
greatest attraction. Long before the time came, r
round as to who she would be and how much or h
would wear. The clergy, the Methodists, and the s

17 H. G. D. Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey (Winchester

taken from a MS. now in the British Museum (Lands no.
fourteenth-century date, formerly at the Abbey.
1"4

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

protested against the retention of this dubious

more patriotic citizens and the general public st
as an ancient tradition. The Press never failed t
appetite by hints that this year Godiva would
Anglo-Saxon times, although records and pictu
she was respectably attired from the beginnin
hat with plumes and an umbrella when the
unkind. She was usually a minor actress or dancer
outside Coventry, and in spite of some indis
partook of too many stirrup cups at local hostel
was kept up throughout the eighteenth and nin
in the face of considerable criticism. After 18
officials ceased to attend, and much of the equi
procession was sold after 1835, so that things
splendid, but the Show Fair continued to be hel
as funds permitted, the last being in 1962. Me
Coventry local Godivas, availing themselves of t
invention, the body stocking, continue to ap
bazaars, and can still be counted on to cause an
jam, even in these permissive days.
One piece of often repeated folklore about the
to have been initiated by a remark made by the Co
W. G. Fretton, which was quoted by Hartland
Fairy Tales, first published in 189i.16 Fretton h
years in the village of Southam near Coventry,
have said - possibly in jest - that there had
cession there about which little was known, sav
fact that there were two Godivas in the cavalcade,
was black. Fretton does not seem to have includ
in his published work, and it may well have be
existence of a figure like that in a nineteenth-c
who was described in a newspaper advertiseme
from the Indies, and who according to one earl
on an elephant, once more no doubt inspired b
There seems no grounds whatsoever for the ela
Robert Graves and Lewis Spence,19 who link

18 F. Bliss Burbidge, Old Coventry and Lady Godiva (B

PP. 43-4; M. Dormer Harris, The Story of Coventry (Lon
10 L. Spence, Traces of Myth and Ritual (London, 1947
I15

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

rider with ancient Britons dyed with woad,

the like, with St George (not brought in until
and Robin Hood thrown in for good measure
If we search for links between the processions
and nineteenth centuries and the Corpus Chris
the Reformation, there is more reason to suggest
as a possible prototype of the later Godiva. T
the Miracle Plays continued to appear in Cove
and among Biblical figures there are records o
although no play about them survives.20 Eve w
boy, like the first Godiva after the Restoratio
if a memory of her appearance, covered by her l
with the similarity of names, could have prom
Godiva as a secular substitute; she is called 'D
the rhyme of 1495-
It was in the course of the eighteenth century
first appeared with Godiva in the processi
indissolubly linked with her ever since, th
The first reference to him appears in a note writ
of a copy of Camden's Brittania now in B
Library."' This records that in 1659 the owner
statue in Coventry which he was told represe
was struck blind for trying to see Godiva as
sounds like a local joke, and it is probable
question is the wooden figure which can be s
in the somewhat incongruous setting of the
famous Peeping Tom of Coventry. He is a life
in helmet and body armour of early Tudor sty
at the elbow and his body somewhat hacked ab
single piece of oak with his arms fastened
originally painted. His head is slightly to one
open in a rather agonized grimace, while his ey
to be blind because the painted eyeballs hav
might account for the story told about him.
feet is of someone advancing to attack, and it

20 H. Craig, Religious Drama of the Middle Ages (Oxfor

284 ff., 361; and Two Corpus Christi Plays (E.E.T.S., 19
103.
21 F. Bliss Burbidge, op. cit., p. 51.
I16

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

Reader that he was a carved figure of one of the w

either St George or St Michael, from a Coventry
position of the arms, it may be noted, is not tha
brandishing a spear or a sword, but on the other
Burbidge in his pamphlet, A Brief Account of the O
of conducting the Show Fair, refers to a man in
before Godiva in the procession 'with a shield i
which was painted St George killing the drago
sword in the other'. He calls this 'a gigantic fig
difficult to know whether this may have been th
who still survives or if so, what was his origin. Anoth
made recently to me is that this could be a figure f
clock.23 Whatever his origin, he became a famous
city. We are told that in 1765 the effigy of Pe
painted and his wig dressed so that he could be
procession.24 Later on, with a large cocked hat on
was set up in the window of a house in Greyfr
Alderman Owen lived, then moved to the house of
Thomas Sharp, and finally in 1812 to the King'
can be seen in this position in various nineteenth-c
of the procession. In the early part of the century
human actor in the procession instead of an effigy re
wicked man who had peeped at Godiva, for he is d
early pamphlet25 as a Merry Andrew, diverting th
his profane conceits, and he was pulled along in his
a wagon, popping in and out of the window to amu
There was some disapproval of this vulgar additio
told in another pamphlet later in the century:26

Peeping Tom has been left off for many years. The
who was drawn about the town, being taken very ill i
his coming out of the house, and dying very soon after
ing manner, has intimidated others from carrying on t

22 W. Reader, History and Antiquities of the City of Coventry

pp. Io6 ff.
23 This suggestion was made to me after the reading of the paper to the
Society by Mr Alan Smith and also (independently) by Mr J. G. Godwin.
24 F. Bliss Burbidge, op. cit., p. 56.
25 W. Reader, Origin and Description of Coventry Show Fair (Coventry,
I830).
26 Thomas Burbidge, A Brief Account of the Origin and Mode of conducting
the Show Fair (Coventry, undated).
I"7

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

Tom's sad fate sounds like another piece of

So popular did the wooden Tom become, th
copies were made of him which can still be see
concrete was set up in the Peeping Tom Inn
(originally the Railway Inn), and is now in the C
Another, in painted plaster with a heavy core,
years in a tobacconist's shop in Smithford St, a
to the father of the present owner of Agar's shoe
tion St, where he can occasionally be seen on d
very fine model, said to be of varnished beeswa
possession of Mr Frank West, an elderly gen
Coventry, who claims that it has been in his fam
but does not know who made it.28 This figure w
procession of 1962. The fourth figure is the on
and origin are known. He was carved in stone
Brothers, a firm of Coventry sculptors, for t
Freeman in 1934, and is still in the possession
family at Leamington Spa.29 Mr Freeman w
ancient cars and bicycles and interested in loca
Tom was made with a forked beard and a Saxon
set up leaning out of a gable window in Bishop
There was much argument in the local Pr
thirties as to which figure was the original Tom
wooden figure was taken down in 1935 from th
which it had been boarded up for many years,
the cocked hat was removeable, and that he
length man in armour, corresponding with ear
The other figures are busts only, and all excep
figure are close copies of the wooden soldier; i
27 The proprietor of the shop, Mr Hodson, was most he
to see this figure and in giving me information about it.
21 I am most grateful to Mr West and to his daughter-i
allowing me to visit them to see the figure, and for telling m
with their family.
29 This figure was traced by Mr Newbold, of the Coventr
and I am most grateful to him and to Mr T. B. Freeman
copies of cuttings about it from newspapers and a photog
was written, a set of photographs of the various effegi
Coventry Evening Telegraph with an article by Mr. Newb
photographs are to be included in the Coventry and Warw
30 Midland Daily Telegraph of 27 Sept., 1934; I5 Oct., I
These are in the Coventry and Warwickshire Collection in
Library.
118

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

interesting to know by whom and at what dat

Coventry people remember small models of
pottery sold as souvenirs before the last war, a
most interesting example of living city folklor
comparison with that surrounding the fam
Brussels with his vast wardrobe of uniforms in
Literary references to Peeping Tom are not f
seventeenth century. He is not mentioned in th
I650.31 After the first note in Camden referrin
1659, we next find an account of his action in t
City Annals of the late seventeenth century, wr
Wanley, son of the Vicar of Holy Trinity Chu
man who looked through a window is not ment
In the Forenoone all householders were Comm
their Families shutting their doores and Windo
Dutchess performed this good deed, without any oth
onely her hair. But about the midst of the Citty h
whereat one desirous to see the strange Case lett d
looked out, for which fact, or for that the Horse did
thereof, though all the Towne were Franchised, ye
toll-free to this day.

In a Latin letter by a Canon of Lichfield in

Magazine of I797 33he is called Action, and is s
the groom of Godiva, betrayed by the neighin
which recognized him. The Canon obviously not
with the story of Actaeon who saw the goddes
and was torn to pieces by his own hounds. Thi
justifies the arguments of those who see Godiva
Later on Tom was described as a tailor.
Once more there are folktale parallels. One is found in a series
of tales of the type known as the Fairy Midwife,34 where a man or
woman is given power to see the fairies and then is blinded in one
eye or two because they see what they should not as a result of

31 J. W. Halls and F. I. Furnivall, Percy Folio (1868), iii, pp. 473-5.

32 Coventry Record Office, A.43. f.6a; B. M. Harl, MS. 6388, f.6b.
33 Letter from Thomas Seward, Canon of Lichfield, published after his death
in the Gentleman's Magazine, lxvii (June, 1797), p. 478.
34 E. S. Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales (London, 1891) and 'Peeping.
Tom and Lady Godiva', Folklore, I (189o), pp. 2o7-26. Cf. H. M. Chadwick,
The Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge, 1924), p. 246.
"I9

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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

the magic gift. Even more striking is a tale fro

of the visit of Dame Berchta or Perchta and he
to a house on Twelfth Night, where according
had been left ready for them, while none were
up and see them. A serving boy however peepe
a crack in a door, and was blinded by one of th
into his eyes. Such stories may preserve very e
the motif of the danger of spying on visitan
World is undoubtedly an ancient one, but this a
that the eighteenth-century Peeping Tom goes
to pre-Christian or even to Anglo-Saxon traditi
he would hardly have been consistently omitted f
accounts. But once more I would stress the
influence of popular tales on stories of famou
Peeping Tom offers a clear example.
The popularity of the Godiva legend has been
it is not difficult to see why. Here, as with the
the cakes, we have a great personage, a fine a
placed at the mercy of the common people, wi
by the use of power but by innate goodness an
because the people helped her. This aspect of th
favourite of the Victorian schoolroom, and it h
of a long series of poems, plays, romantic n
pictures, as may been seen from the Appendix
book, Godiva of Coventry. At the same time
earthy element in the story once Peeping T
Godiva has inspired more than one satiric com
to perennial jests. The legitimate portrayal
provided a pleasurable thrill in a puritanical a
processions kept Godiva's memory alive as n
alone could hope to do. She is a loved figure sti
more so because she evokes laughter as well as
belief is that the story is based on a genuine h
and has drawn into itself from the beginning
elements which give it some of the characteristic
myths, but which do not entitle us to view it as e
survivals in eleventh-century Mercia. Finall
Godiva legend as a heartening memorial to
women in Anglo-Saxon times, something which
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 THE LEGEND OF LADY GODIVA

Norman England and was slow to return. In t

half comic story, Leofric has suffered, perha
expense of his wife. The last laugh is not with
with the sly man of the people, but with the
who took her responsibilities seriously. From
point, I feel that Coventry's choice of a traditi
an excellent one.

121

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