he grain of the Maiden
sheaf, or buried in the earth. This rite is common among savages, and
its presence in old European ritual is attested by survivals. That these
rites were tabu to men probably points to the fact that they were
examples of an older general custom, in which all such rites were in the
hands of women who cultivated the earth, and who were the natural
priestesses of goddesses of growth and fertility, of vegetation and the
growing corn. Another example is found in the legend and procession of
Godiva at Coventry--the survival of a pagan cult from which men were
excluded.[949]

Pliny speaks of the nudity of the women engaged in the cult. Nudity is
an essential part of all primitive agricultural rites, and painting the
body is also a widespread ritual act. Dressing with leaves or green
stuff, as among the Namnite women, and often with the intention of
personating the spirit of vegetation, is also customary. By unveiling
the body, and especially the sexual organs, women more effectually
represented the goddess of fertility, and more effectually as her
representatives, or through their own powers, magically conveyed
fertility to the fields. Nakedness thus became a powerful
magico-religious symbol, and it is found as part of the ritual for
producing rain.[950]

There is thus abundant evidence of the cult of fertility, vegetation,
and corn-spirits, who tended to become divinities, male or female. Here
and there, through conservatism, the cult remained in the hands of
women, but more generally it had become a ritual in which both men and
women took part--that of the great agricultural festivals. Where a
divinity had taken the place of the vaguer spirits, her image, like that
of Berecynthia, was used in the ritual, but the image was probably the
successor of the tree which embodied the vegetation-spirit, and was
carried through the fields to fertilise them. Similar processions of
images, often accompanied by a ritual washing of the image in order to
invigorate the divinity, or, as in the similar May-day custom, to
produce rain, are found in the Teutonic cult of Nerthus, the Phrygian of
Cybele, the Hindu of Bhavani, and the Roman ritual of the Bona Dea. The
image of Berecynthia was thus probably washed also. Washing the images
of saints, usually to produce rain, has sometimes taken the place of the
washing of a divine image, and similarly the relics of a saint are
carried through a field, as was the tree or imag