Godiva
Lady, in British legend, the wife of the Earl of Coventry. When the mothers of the town came to Godiva and represented that their taxes were so oppressive that their children were without bread, and must die, she went to her grim lord Leofric, among his hounds and followers, and begged that the taxes might be remitted. He twitted her on her want of sincere interest in such trash, and when she insisted that she would do much, even to the laying down of her life for breadless children, he told her that if she would ride naked through the town he would remit the tax. She caused a proclamation to be made, so runs the story, that all the inhabitants should shut themselves up within their houses and not dare to look out. Then clothed only in her long hair, which reached to her knees, she rode the length of the main street on her palfrey and returned. Only one person ventured to look out, but he was struck with immediate blindness. He has since been called "Peeping Tom of Coventry." The earl was obliged to keep his word. Taxes were remitted; children were fed. The legend was kept alive for many a century by a yearly pageant or procession. Tennyson has told the story well in his poem of Godiva. See Coventry
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 needs, 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.
God Save the King (or Queen), the English national anthem. The authorship of both words and music is credited usually to Henry Carey. The story is that he was aided in composing the music by Dr. Thornton of Bath, some say by Christopher Smith, Handel's clerk. The song was published first in Gentleman's Magazine in 1745 in honor of George II. The music, according to another account, was composed by Anthony Young, an organist in London. Still another story is to the effect that the song was written originally for King James II, and read "God Save Great James our King," and that after the abdication of James, it was sung no more until 1740, when it was revived for King George. The tune was adopted in France in 1776. The national songs of Denmark, Prussia, and Germany are set to this air. It is found in Beethoven's National Symphony and in more than one of Weber's compositions. Our own America, written in 1843 by Samuel Francis Smith, is sung to the same tune.