Change food, change sky, change everything:
No time, no masks tonight, get a move, quick,
Newlyweds are splitting up,
Some children are born stones,
Some streams or gales, yet she swears
Beasts get silent deaths,
That bloody liar with her spoilt chums -
Let’s hit back, c’mon, no entry
For pastel shades here, sorry,
Only navy blue, dark green get the pass
And where the heck is Cassandra’s stare,
Grab it asap, only those eyes
Can taser to death the boss of our suburbia
Where the days hand over at gunpoint
All colours to darkness and peeps see nothing,
Too busy fooling around -
The sky? Oh, shaking with rage as ever,
The eerie blue light few souls can spot:
Please don’t blame them if they hang out with quasars,
You didn’t scorch the rain for overstaying, did you?
So what? Look, no point trusting a rage
So blue, so weird, who sulks like a rejected lover
Bet she’ll go over to the first winds that blow -
A blizzard, then? No, our first merc eloped
With some guys picked up on a whim,
Afraid we’ve but one choice left, demise -
What? The snotty nob who gives no answers
And hardly says hello?
No thanks, her loss if night can’t see
The days as a broken promise,
Silence as a yesterday outfit,
Count me out, my sweet Godiva
If the poor darling stands shaky, blue and tired -
Was it death the sky was cheating?
Well, just scraps of blue lies and papers,
Maybe the ghastly sap of your soul, maybe a miracle.
[from A Blue Soul, Argotist Ebooks]
Lady Godiva -- Harry Sternberg
No time, no masks tonight, get a move, quick,
Newlyweds are splitting up,
Some children are born stones,
Some streams or gales, yet she swears
Beasts get silent deaths,
That bloody liar with her spoilt chums -
Let’s hit back, c’mon, no entry
For pastel shades here, sorry,
Only navy blue, dark green get the pass
And where the heck is Cassandra’s stare,
Grab it asap, only those eyes
Can taser to death the boss of our suburbia
Where the days hand over at gunpoint
All colours to darkness and peeps see nothing,
Too busy fooling around -
The sky? Oh, shaking with rage as ever,
The eerie blue light few souls can spot:
Please don’t blame them if they hang out with quasars,
You didn’t scorch the rain for overstaying, did you?
So what? Look, no point trusting a rage
So blue, so weird, who sulks like a rejected lover
Bet she’ll go over to the first winds that blow -
A blizzard, then? No, our first merc eloped
With some guys picked up on a whim,
Afraid we’ve but one choice left, demise -
What? The snotty nob who gives no answers
And hardly says hello?
No thanks, her loss if night can’t see
The days as a broken promise,
Silence as a yesterday outfit,
Count me out, my sweet Godiva
If the poor darling stands shaky, blue and tired -
Was it death the sky was cheating?
Well, just scraps of blue lies and papers,
Maybe the ghastly sap of your soul, maybe a miracle.
[from A Blue Soul, Argotist Ebooks]
Lady Godiva -- Harry Sternberg
Roger of Wendover was the 1st important chronicler who worked at the St Albans abbey, though his “Flores Historiarum” (Flowers of History) was probably based in part on the material compiled by abbot John of Wallingford. John died in 1214, and Roger in 1236. One of the book’s best-known passages concerned the 11th-century earl Leofric of Mercia and his wife Godiva (the Latinized form of Godgifu, “gift of God”). “Earl” was a new title, an expansion of the Anglo-Saxon ealdorman. “He was very wise in all matters, both religious and secular, that benefited all this nation,” according to contemporary accounts. In 1016 Knútr Sveinsson became king of England and elevated Leofric to an earldom the following year. Upon Knútr’s death in 1035 Leofric was instrumental in securing the succession of his son Harald. Leofric died in 1057 and was succeeded by his son Ælfgar, whose daughter Ealdgyth married Harold Godwineson, thus making Godiva the queen of England’s grandmother for 9 months until Harold was slain by William the Conqueror in 1066. She died a year later, 1 of the 4 or 5 richest women in the kingdom. According to Roger,
ReplyDelete“The Countess Godiva devoutly anxious to free the city of Coventry from a grievous and base thralldom often besought the Count, her husband, that he would for love of the Holy Trinity and the sacred Mother of God liberate it from such servitude. But he rebuked her for vainly demanding a thing so injurious to himself and forbade her to move further therein. Yet she, out of her womanly pertinacity, continued to press the matter insomuch that she obtained this answer from him: “Ascend,” he said, “thy horse naked and pass thus through the city from one end to the other in sight of the people and on thy return thou shalt obtain thy request.” Upon which she returned: “And should I be willing to do this, wilt thou give me leave?” “I will,” he responded. Then the Countess Godiva, beloved of God, ascended her horse, naked, loosing her long hair which clothed her entire body except her snow white legs, and having performed the journey, seen by none, returned with joy to her husband who, regarding it as a miracle, thereupon granted Coventry a Charter, confirming it with his seal.”
In 1569 Puritan printer Richard Grafton sanitized the story in his “Chronicle of England.” In his account Leofricus had already exempted the people of Coventry from "any maner of Tolle, Except onely of Horses" and Godina took her famous ride to win relief from the horse tax as well, but she required the town officials to order the inhabitants to shut themselves in and shutter all windows on the day of her ride. A century later the ballad "Leoffricus" reaffirmed Grafton's version, insisting that the townsfolk were ordered to "shutt their dore, & clap their windowes downe," and remain indoors on the day of her ride. Humphrey Wanley, the 1st keeper of the Harleian Library of illuminated manuscripts, who founded the Society of Antiquaries in 1707, added a new detail:
“In the Forenoone all householders were Commanded to keep in their Families shutting their doores & Windows close whilest the Duchess performed this good deed, which done she rode naked through the midst of the Towne, without any other Coverture save only her hair. But about the midst of the Citty her horse neighed, whereat one desirous to see the strange Case lett downe a Window, & looked out, for which fact, or for that the horse did neigh, as the cause thereof. Though all the Towne were Franchised, yet horses were not toll-free to this day.”
In some sources the voyeur was Action, Godiva’s groom, but by the 18th century he was known as Peeping Tom the tailor. Various accounts claim that he was killed for his effrontery, or that he was struck blind or dead as heavenly punishment or that the people of Coventry themselves blinded him.
Godiva
ReplyDeleteI waited for the train at Coventry;
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city’s ancient legend into this:-
Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,
And loathed to see them overtax’d; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought
Their children, clamouring, ‘If we pay, we starve!’
She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode
About the hall, among his dogs, alone,
His beard a foot before him and his hair
A yard behind. She told him of their tears,
And pray’d him, ‘If they pay this tax, they starve.’
Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,
‘You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?’ – ‘But I would die’, said she.
He laugh’d, and swore by Peter and by Paul;
Then fillip’d at the diamond in her ear;
‘Oh ay, ay, ay, you talk!’ -‘Alas!’ she said,
‘But prove me what I would not do.’
And from a heart as rough as Esau’s hand,
He answer’d, ‘Ride you naked thro’ the town,
And I repeal it;’ and nodding, as in scorn,
He parted, with great strides among his dogs.
So left alone, the passions of her mind,
As winds from all the compass shift and blow,
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people: therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing; but that all
Should keep within, door shut, and window barr’d.
Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasp’d the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim Earl’s gift; but ever at a breath
She linger’d, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,
And shower’d the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From piller unto pillar, until she reach’d
The Gateway, there she found her palfrey trapt
In purple blazon’d with armorial gold.
Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listen’d round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.
The little wide-mouth’d heads upon the spout
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur
Made her cheek flame; her palfrey’s foot-fall shot
Light horrors thro’ her pulses; the blind walls
Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she
Not less thro’ all bore up, till, last, she saw
The white-flower’d elder-thicket from the field,
Gleam thro’ the Gothic archway in the wall.
Then she rode back, clothed on with chasity;
And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,
The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger-hole in fear,
Peep’d – but his eyes, before they had their will,
Were shrivell’d into darkness in his head,
And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait
On noble deeds, cancell’d a sense misused;
And she, that knew not, pass’d: and all at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clash’d and hammer’d from a hundred towers,
One after one: but even then she gain’d
Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown’d,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away
And built herself an everlasting name.
--Alfred Lord Tennyson