Lady Godiva

By Ginger Lane

Aging is a funny thing in many ways. This story is about the ‘next generation’ and how the reality of the ‘over the hill’ can just slap you in the face.

My son, Jesse, was out of town when his cell phone went dead. Needing to make a call and not having the charger with him, he stopped at a convenience store. A very young man (teenager) was working the county. Now, Jesse is only 27, but when he asked where he could find a pay phone, the cashier said, “A what?”.

Reality struck! My son is now in an older generation! Jesse was stunned! When he told me this story, he was a bit upset by it.

However, I can’t quit laughing about it. It happens to me quite often since I work with a much younger crowd than myself, and just last week, I mentioned Lady Godiva. There were 4 people here and no one knew who she was.

So for all of you ‘youngins’ (as my grandmother would say), here’s the scoop on Lady Godiva! www.harvardmagazine.com

The Legend
STAGGERING beneath the yoke of oppressive taxes, the medieval residents of Coventry, England, pleaded in vain for relief. Ironically, deliverance would come from the wife of the very lord who scorned their pleas. Lady Godiva repeatedly urged her husband, Leofric, to lessen the people’s tax burden, and time and again he refused. Yet she persisted, and one day in exasperation he told her he would lower taxes when she rode a horse, naked, through the streets of the town at midday. When she took him at his word and set out on her famous ride, the highborn Lady Godiva became an instant heroine to the common people of Coventry.

Maybe closer to the truth!

A fascinating piece of history. But as it happens, most medieval scholars agree the ride never took place. Professor of English and American literature and language Daniel Donoghue examines the origins and cultural significance of the myth in Lady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend (Blackwell), and offers insights into how that myth has evolved over the centuries. “The story,” he notes, “was based on the life of Godifu, a real woman who lived in Coventry in the latter part of the eleventh century and was married to one of the most powerful men in England.”

Contemporary historians did not consider Godifu particularly noteworthy; what little was written about her at the time mentioned her merely as the wife of a famous man. But Donoghue points out that “two centuries after her death, chroniclers in the Benedictine abbey of St. Albans inserted a fully developed narrative into their Latin histories” and the legend of Lady Godiva was born. “Nobody knows quite why the legend was invented and attached to her name,” he says, “but it does seem to function as a kind of myth of origin for the town of Coventry. At the end, Count Leofric seals the agreement about taxes with his own seal.”