f the procession. Let us therefore turn to one or two curious
religious ceremonies, which may have some bearing upon it. A potent
spell to bring rain was reported as actually practised during the
Gorakhpur famine of 1873-4. It consisted of a gang of women stripping
themselves perfectly naked, and going out by night to drag the plough
across a field. The men were kept carefully out of the way, as it was
believed that peeping by them would not only vitiate the spell, but
bring trouble on the village. It would not be a long step from this
belief to a story in which peeping was alleged to have taken place with
disastrous effects, either to the village, or (by favour of the deities
intended to be propitiated) to the culprit himself. At the festival of
the local goddess in the village of Serur, in the Southern Mahratta
country, the third and fourth days are devoted to private offerings.
Many women, we are told, on these days walk naked to the temple in
fulfilment of vows, "but they were covered with leaves and boughs of
trees, and surrounded by their female relations and friends."[54]

The performance of religious rites by women alone, when men are required
under heavy penalties to absent themselves, is, indeed, not very
uncommon in savage life. Nor is it confined to savage life. When Rome
was at the height of her civilization and her triumphs, the festival of
the Bona Dea was rendered notorious by the divorce of Caesar's wife and
by legal proceedings against an aristocratic scoundrel, who, for the
purposes of an intrigue with her, had violated the sacred ceremonies.
The Bona Dea, or Good Goddess, was a woodland deity, the daughter and
wife of Faunus. Her worship had descended from a remote antiquity; and
her annual festival was held in the month of December, and was attended
only by women. The matrons of the noblest families of Rome met by night
in the house of the highest official of the state to perform the
traditional ceremonies of the goddess, and to pray for the well-being of
the Roman people. Only women, and those of the most unsullied character,
were permitted to attend; and the breach of this rule by Clodius,
disguised in woman's garb, constituted a heinous offence against the
state, from the penalties of which he only escaped, if we may believe
Cicero, by bribing the judges.[55]

At the village of Southam, not far from Coventry, another procession in
honour of Godiva formerly took place. Very little is known about i