st rose to wealth and repute; and the townsfolk on
this score owed a debt of gratitude to the foundress, though there is no
record whether any special day was set apart in her honour.

On the whole, then, there is ground for supposing that the legend and
procession of Lady Godiva are survivals of a pagan belief and worship
located at Coventry; that the legend was concerned with a being awful
and mysterious as Dame Berchta, or Hertha herself; and that the incident
of Peeping Tom was from the first, or at all events from an early date,
part of the story. The evidence upon which these conclusions rest may be
shortly recapitulated thus:--

1. The absence of historical foundation for the tradition.

2. The close resemblance between the tradition and other stories and
superstitions which unquestionably deal with heathen goddesses, such as
Berchta and Hertha.

3. The equally close analogy between the procession and that described
in Eastern stories, which, so far as we know, could not have reached
England at the latest period when the procession could possibly have
been instituted; and between the procession and certain heathen rites
practised not only in the East, but as near home as Rome and
Germany,--nay, in Britain itself.

4. The occurrence of a similar procession at Southam, in the same
county, having the special feature of a black lady, best explained as a
survival of certain rites practised by the ancient Britons.

5. The connection between the analogous legend at St. Briavel's and the
remains of a sacred communal feast that can hardly be anything else than
the degraded remnant of a pagan observance.

The want of historical evidence cannot, of course, be overlooked; but we
must remember that in investigating traditions and traditional
observances we are dealing with a phase of civilization of which history
only yields rare and indirect glimpses. It is the absence of direct
evidence that, not only in the science of Folklore, but also in the
physical sciences, causes resort to the evidence afforded by comparison
of other structures and processes. On the validity of this evidence, and
the reasoning based upon it, nearly all our scientific learning depends.
In spite, therefore, of the defects in the historical evidence, and in
the absence of evidence to the contrary, it can scarcely be denied that
the analogies in both custom and legend here brought together amount to
a fairly strong presumption in favour of the con