Post by Tamrin on Jul 10, 2010 15:56:54 GMT 10
Coventry, England: Lady Godiva Day
(this day 1040)
(this day 1040)
Who was the naked lady on the horse?
[Excerpts - Article by Pip Wilson, Wilson's Almanac - Linked Above]
[Excerpts - Article by Pip Wilson, Wilson's Almanac - Linked Above]
Lady Godiva – Godgyfu as her name was originally – really did exist and was a Saxon noblewoman and patron of the arts, married to Leofric, Duke of Mercia in England. The couple moved to Coventry, Warwickshire, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire (where Leofric had earned his fortune and title from the mutton trade). It is known that Leofric began spending large amounts of taxpayers’ money, as politicians are wont to do, on grandiose public works, while the people of Coventry, as people are wont to do, lived in poverty.
The legend says that Godiva, generous and strong-willed, was outraged at a poll or tax that Leofric was planning to levy on the people of Coventry, and she persistently asked him to lift the imposition, or at least use the money for the provision of works of art that the peasants might enjoy. Leofric laughed so much that he injured his left wrist slightly as he fell off his stool in the hall of the village burghers. However, the nouveau-riche gentleman offered her a deal: if his wife would ride naked on horseback through the town, then he would agree to waive the tax.
The legend says that Godiva, generous and strong-willed, was outraged at a poll or tax that Leofric was planning to levy on the people of Coventry, and she persistently asked him to lift the imposition, or at least use the money for the provision of works of art that the peasants might enjoy. Leofric laughed so much that he injured his left wrist slightly as he fell off his stool in the hall of the village burghers. However, the nouveau-riche gentleman offered her a deal: if his wife would ride naked on horseback through the town, then he would agree to waive the tax.
However, a fact that has almost been lost in the millennium since Godiva lived is that the good lady herself possessed the village of Coventry outright and she needn’t have begged Leofric to suspend or repeal any tax imposed upon it. Godiva controlled the collection of these herself. As Octavia Randolph points out:
“The reason for this persistent misrepresentation is simple, but profound in its implications to the unfolding of the tale. Because Anglo-Saxon woman – indeed all women in England – had by the time of even the earliest extant retelling lost the extensive property (and other personal and legal) rights they had enjoyed prior to the disaster of 1066, chroniclers wrote from the perspective of Norman law and mores.”Coventry has long hosted an annual fair. Her procession at Southam, near Coventry, formerly included images of the goddesses Holda (white) and Hela (black), and Godiva herself might be an ancient representation of the Celtic horse goddess, Epona...