Lady Godiva

A Child's Nursery Rhyme

Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross,

To see a fine Lady upon a white horse.    

With rings on Her fingers and bells on Her toes,

She shall have music wherever She goes.

As a child, I learned this nursery rhyme, as you did.  And, probably, as you did, think it had something to do with an English queen, or Lady Godiva, or some other lady from medieval times.  Perhaps, you thought it had nothing to do with anything. 

            Well . . . according to The Sabbats by Edain McCoy it has to do with Goddess!  The book reminds us that crossroads were sacred places.  The place of witches, magic, and choosing different paths.  McCoy claims that the rhyme has to do with Beltane, when Scottish (Morris) dancers traditionally danced over two crossed swords that resemble a Sun Wheel honoring the four directions.  Each spoke of the Wheel also represents a male and a female sacredly united by the ritual dance.

            At Beltane, the English thought you could get a glimpse of Goddess at crossroads.  The book continues with the thought that the cockhorse is the besom (broom) ridden over the fields to ensure a good harvest.  The bells are the bells that traditional Morris dancers wear around their ankles.  The Lady is the Goddess.  The music is praising her honor.

            I liked what McCoy had to say, and it seemed reasonable.  Although I don’t know how old this rhyme is, let’s assume it was composed in a time when people still acknowledged the existence of the Goddess and honored Her through ritual.

            I looked up the word “cockhorse” in my Encarta World English Dictionary and saw the following definition, “a rocking horse or a stick with an imitation horse’s head on one end.”  So far, so good.  One way of traveling in olden times was by horse, another (if you’re a witch) was by broom.  I also looked up ‘hobbyhorse’ since that’s what I used to call the stick horse of my childhood.  The Encarta had this to say, “...a toy consisting of a long stick with the shape of a horse’s head at one end.”  And number 3 definition, “horse figure used in folk dances , a representation of a horse that a Morris dancer or mummer wears around the waist so that it appears that the horse is being ridden.”  I never realized the stick horse toy of today might be connected to witches and the Goddess!  Way cool!!!

            The rhyme is telling us to fly on our magical steed to a crossroads to see a “fine Lady”, the Goddess upon a white horse.

            In Barbara G. Walker’s excellent book The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets we find that “Ancient pagan horse-worship was ... common and acceptable, co-existing with Christianity, ... when kings of Ireland still underwent symbolic rebirth from the White Mare.  She was Epona, the Celtic version of Cretan Leukippe (“White Mare”), one of many relics of the Amazonian horse-cult throughout Europe.”  Then Walker says, “Another relic of pre-Christian horse worship is the Morris dancer’s traditional horse-headed stick, or “hobby horse” –otherwise the cock-horse ridden to Banbury Cross to see the Goddess make her ritual ride as Lady Godiva.”

            Under the heading of Lady Godiva in Walker’s book, I found, “The legend of Lady Godiva’s naked ride through Coventry evolved from the Goddess’s May-Eve procession, which the clergy first tried to suppress by ordering the people to stay indoors and refrain from watching it.”  The very name is evoking the Goddess, three times.  Lady was the title of the female who gives us bread–the sustenance of life.  Mother Goda was another name for the Norse Goddess Freya.  Diva (derived from Sanscrit devi) was a universal Indo-European word for Goddess.  Further down the page, Walker says, “The original purpose of her ride, to renew her virginity, consummate the sacred marriage, and thus provide the blessings of fertility for the coming year, was at last forgotten.  An improbable fable was made up, saying a human Lady of Coventry rode naked alone, only because her Lord insisted on it.  This is all most people now know of the history of Godiva, the Gothic Goddess.”  Lady Godiva and the Lady on a white horse are one and the same–the Goddess.

            I’m guessing about the rest of the rhyme.  I believe the rings on her fingers denote a certain richness about the Lady.  She is dressed in all Her finery.  She is dressed for a joyous affair.

            The bells on her toes are even more interesting.  I looked up bell in my now famous Encarta and found this among the expected definitions: “Bells are traditionally used as summonses and signals.”  Okay.  The Lady is summoning us to join her on Her journey.  She’s signaling that the trip is in progress and if we wish to follow Her, we have to get off our duffs and move with Her.  Another definition is, “ring a bell,  to evoke a vague memory of something or somebody.”  The bells are to remind us of who this Lady is.  The Lady is the Goddess. 

            Is the last line meaningful?  I looked up the word ‘music’ in my dictionary and found that its root word is ‘muse’.  So...I looked up ‘muse’ and found, “In Greek mythology, one of the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory.”  Three is a sacred number, the number of the Triple Goddess, Maiden, Mother, Crone.  Three times three is very sacred. A tripling of a triple number.  Very powerful.  Walker claims the “Muses were originally a triad–the primordial Triple Goddess.”  She also states, “The seven-tone musical scale was the Muses’ invention, supposedly based on their “music” of the seven spheres.”

            So, this four line rhyme learned in early childhood has deep meaning.  What was recited without thought as a child, can now be recited as praise for the Mother of us all.  The Goddess who will be surrounded by music wherever, whenever She travels a path leading to a crossroad.

Jeanne (Pythia) Leiter