lack lady of Southam we have a survival of the performance.
It is not too much to say that this explanation would have the merit of
being intelligible and adequate.[56]

In all countries ceremonies of a special character are usually dramatic.
They represent, or are believed to represent, actions of the divinities
in whose honour they are performed. The rites of the Bona Dea, we know,
were of this kind; and they consequently degenerated into orgies of a
shameful character. The Coventry procession is admittedly a
representation of Godgifu's ride. It is not now, nor has it been so long
as we have any records of it--that is to say for two hundred
years--connected with any professed act of worship; but this is not
incompatible with its being the long-descended relic of some such
observance as those I have described. The introduction of Christianity
did not annihilate the older cults. The new religion incorporated some
of them; and although the rest were no longer regarded as sacred, the
feeling of obligation remained attached to them for centuries. They were
secularized, and ultimately degraded for the most part into burlesque.
Such as were connected with municipal life, or, as we shall see in a
future chapter, with family life, retained a measure of solemnity long
after it had passed away from rites which had been abandoned to an
unorganized mob. This is well illustrated by the contrast between the
ceremonial at Coventry (whatever its origin) and that at St. Briavels.
The stronger hand of a municipality would have a restraining power
wanting to that of a village community, or a parish--especially if the
latter had been governed by a lord, who in later times had been shorn of
his authority, or had ceased to reside among, or take an interest in the
affairs of, his tenantry. Something like this I take to have been the
history of St. Briavels. There does not appear from Rudder's account to
have been, in his time at least, any pageant commemorative of the
achievement of the lady to whom the parishioners reckoned themselves to
owe their privileges; nor have I been able to trace one by local
inquiries. But the tradition is at St. Briavels unmistakably connected
with a religious and social rite. The distribution of food on a day of
high and holy festival in the church to the congregation, and paid for
by a levy upon every householder in the parish, can point to nothing
else than a feast of the whole community as a solemn act of wors