October 29, 2008 • 15 mins
In an argument over taxing peasants, Lady Godiva -- whose real name was actually Godgifu -- called her husband's bluff and rode naked through the marketplace. Or did she? learn more about the fact and fiction surrounding Lady Godiva in this podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, we welcome to the podcast
on editor Candu Skips and Joy to Day by staff
writer Josh Clark. It's always go well, so, Candice. I
(00:22):
was eating a box of delicious Godiva chocolates the other day,
my favorite. I ate the whole box by myself, and
as I was sitting there afterwards, with my face covered
in chocolate, I was looking at the at the top
of it, and they're in the flesh is Lady Godiva, um,
who apparently rode naked on horseback for some reason, um
(00:44):
some time ago, and I started wondering, you know, is
is that fact or fiction? Did Lady Godiva really ride
that horse naked? Well? That's actually please, I can't do
this anymore. I'm are you reacting to the chocolate? No, no, Cannis,
I'm not. Um. I'm just gonna level with you, Okay,
(01:04):
I can't. I can't live this lie any longer. I
know exactly whether or not Lady could Diva really rode
the horse? Okay, Like I you wrote this article, I
read it last night. I got to the end. I
know exactly what you're going to say. I know whether
it's fact, I know whether it's fiction. And I can't
do this anymore. It's too much of a strain to
pretend like I don't know. Okay, I'm sorry. I guess
(01:28):
I just ruined the podcast, is it? So? No? No, No,
it doesn't have to It doesn't have to be like
that between us. Okay, if you know what you're talking about,
and I know the answer, why don't we just talk
about it? Can we do that? I think so we
can do that? Okay, alright, because I mean, you know,
some of the other articles that we've talked about. I
(01:49):
even wrote. I mean, it's just ridiculous. I I now,
and I've known all along that you've known all along.
It's it's true. I was just trying to humor you.
I thought everybody would, you know, I want to play
like that, But let's play fair. Thanks by the rules.
We're very smart people. Maybe I'm a little bit smarter,
but you're cuddlier. So let's have that. All right. Well, cool,
(02:11):
let's try this alright. Back at square one. She's on
the chocolate box. She is she is? And uh, you know,
there was a reason that the guy who founded Good
Diva Chocolates gave and it had to do with them
her passion and lack of modesty, and that he thought
she was hot or something like that. Yeah, he thought
she had a lot of style. And you know, it's funny.
I was doing a little bit of research about Godive
(02:32):
and I found out that, um, people didn't actually start,
or women rather, didn't start riding side saddle on horses
until many centuries after Godiva. So it doesn't seem particularly
stylist to straddle a horse naked and ride through town. No,
I imagined that would leave very little to the imagine. Yeah,
but There's chocolates are delicious, the best. They are good.
(02:54):
They are good. And while I'm confessing, I had to
say I had no idea. She even rode side saddle
on the good Dive logo, So it's the only classy
thing to do. So well, let's back it up. Good,
did she or did she not take the naked horse ride?
I know the answer to this, Well, have at it.
Tell us what is that she did not? It would um?
I mean, because of the historical distortions, I imagine you
(03:17):
would call it faction. But really, ultimately, if you want
to get down to brass tacks, it doesn't appear that
she did right, So Goodiva, and I apologize to all
of the Welsh scholars out there who are going to
read me for probably mispronouncing her name was actually God
gafew No, no, you have to say it like you
have been around the office. I like to say God
(03:39):
gafe you and God give. That was another name for her. Um.
Josh has been making fun of me all morning because
you go, you say God, and you do this little
dip down and then up, and then you look very
pleased with yourself. I know I look sort of like
an animal when I do it. I really can't help it,
um anyway, So God Gafeu is her name. Eleventh century
(04:01):
woman uh and Anglo Saxon. I guess England is what
we would call it today. And she wasn't technically a
lady because back then that was a title reserve for
the queens, so she could have been a countess. She
married a count essentially or an earl. Yeah, Leah Frick
isn't that great name? My firstborn son Leo really happy do?
(04:23):
And she also could have been called in that time period,
would have been appropriate to say that she was Lea
Fric's bed partner, and that also translates into some sort
of Welsh business. Yeah yeah, so really how that it
when you read the article? So he was pretty wealthy.
Leo Frick essentially owned Mercia, which was this kingdom in
(04:44):
the center of modern day England, and it was right
across from Wales. And he was pretty powerful, right, I mean,
it wasn't just this very localized power. It extended around
the country. He's a big deal. He was a big deal.
And she was a pretty big deal too. She came
from a really wealthy family and so when she came
into the marriage, you know, with her property and her
money and his property and his money. I mean, wow,
(05:07):
didn'tn't wasn't she ruling her own? Didn't she own like
eight different places she did? Kingdoms or something? She certainly did,
one of which was Coventry, which is yeah, this is
the side where she supposedly took this naked horse ride,
which we know did not happen. So back in eleventh
century England, women were pretty important in the home and
(05:30):
one of their responsibilities was managing their wealth and the
family's wealth and dolling out money to different you know, beneficiaries,
and one of the things that lady Godiva chose to
give a lot of money to was the abbey and
their domain, and there was a Benedictine abbey in Coventry,
and she supposedly gave a ton of money and gold
(05:52):
and jewels, and she just gave it all and she
was recognized as a really, really pious and religious woman.
Which is funny because today when we hear lady could
die by we think of a very like sexually charged symbol,
which I think is, you know how dive a talcolates
at least, but want us to think of her. They
want us to think of sensuality and you know, decadence.
(06:14):
But it wasn't like that at all. So the story
of the horse ride do you want to take it? Well,
I guess I just wanted to throw in that from
what I read in the article, she seems, like you said,
very pious, but she also seems to have a sense
of daring and definitely a sense of humor because you
know why was she challenged to ride naked? Well that's
(06:34):
because her husband had supposedly imposed a really heavy tax
on the citizens of Coventry, and by this legend, she
went to him and said, I really want you to
lift this tax. And he responded, I'll tell you what.
You take off all your clothes and ride through the
center of town in the middle of the day on horseback,
and when you get back, I'll lift the tax. And
(06:56):
she was game. She was game. She said, are you sure?
Just to make sure he serious, and and he must
have thought that she wouldn't take him seriously, but she did.
I think she sort of went straight upstairs, des robed,
let down her hair, covered up all of her lady bits,
and gone on that horse and road. Yeah, not sid
not side, although supposedly uh in in later retellings of
(07:17):
the story, she um, well, the earl decreed that no
one could look, so she was going to just ride
through town no one could see except for again in
Peeping Tom, Keeping Tom and today, peeping Tom is an
expression or a turn of phrase that we use somewhat colloquially.
And I think most people would know what a peeping
(07:38):
tom was, you know, I would. I would go so
far as to say everybody, yeah, for sure. But I
don't think everybody knows necessarily that lady could dive on
peeping Tom or in her connected I had no idea
until I read this article actually, and so in the
first versions of The Lady Could Dive to Tail, Peeping
Tom didn't play a role. People were supposedly so thankful
and respectful of God give You that they, you know,
(08:02):
decided they wouldn't look at her. It was an act
of respect and homage to her for what she was
doing for them, And that was in Roger Windover's version.
That's another thing that kind of makes the diva legend
um a little unbelievable is that she doesn't appear in
in any history until about two years after death, precisely.
(08:23):
So he wrote that entry in ten fifty seven, I
think it was, and then later on there was another
guy who sort of took up the mantle and he
wrote the version that included Peeping Tom. And what's fishy
about this is that he cites the source named Galfreed,
and no one's really sure who that was. Was it
some sort of Jeffrey of that time period maybe, or
(08:46):
God Free of that time maybe? Yeah, they don't really know.
They don't really know. But his story included Peeping Tom,
and that was just a little bit more fun to recount. Really,
the fact that this beautiful woman writes naked through town
and there's this one I out of a whole ton
of people who cannot resist looking at her, but the
joke was on him a little bit. Yeah, um, I
(09:07):
found this a little disheartening. The one guy who looked
was struck either dead or blind by God, depending on
who tells the story. And I'm thinking it's a little harsh.
You know, every conception I have a lady could dive
it was that she was smoking hot. And I really
don't think that you should be struck blind for that
kind of thing, especially in this, in this piece of
(09:29):
art that you've included in the article. He's like up
in a balcony. It's not like he's right up on
r or anything like that. He's not about to jump
down onto the horse with her. He's just looking. Do
you have to get struck blind for that? You know?
I mean being Catholic, I understand I feel kind of
guilty for even thinking this, but it still seems a
little extreme to me. Well extreme or not, that's just
(09:50):
how it went. And actually the tension between the idea
of those scope of philiac someone who gets pleasure and
looking at things. I love that word. Yeah, I think
it's kind of fun. I actually didn't know the word
until I started researching this article. I thought maybe, I mean,
I guess it's pretty similar to being a voider, so
I knew it. That meant so sort of an a
(10:10):
mine is for me really in my voguad lesson of
the day, um and the person on display. So the
exhibitionists from this scapophiliac. When Sigmund Freud was later proposing
theories about sexual tensions and this sort of um odd
dichotomy between the looked at and the looker, or the
gazer and the gazed upon in our society, this was
a perfect example for him to use. But um, you
(10:33):
know it's funny because the peeping tom legend continued later on,
even in later centuries in England, when Coventry would have
a good dive at procession and people would actually parade
through town dressed up like a diva. And one of
the first processions, the guy tapped to play peeping tom
in the procession actually died and I don't remember how,
(10:55):
but he died, and everyone thought, okay, signed from God,
no more being toms. However, and these processions and these
processions continue today, don't they do it? Annually they do,
they do, yeah, And usually it's it's a woman, sometimes
it's a man. At least a long time ago, it
was like a young guy, sort of like in Shakespeare's
day when the boys play the female parts too. And
(11:17):
it used to it used to be that she would
wear a flesh colored body stocking and a wig. But
you know, in today's day and age, who knows, maybe
there's someone out there really straddling that horse. So let's
tear this legend apart, all right. First of all, it
doesn't first appear until two hundred years after it supposedly happened.
Right right there, there's exhibit A. Um, you know what
(11:39):
else is wrong with it? Well, there's the fact that
Godiva actually owned Coventry, So if she'd wanted taxes lowered,
she wouldn't have asked lia Frick. It would have been
her call because it was her land. And the other
problem is that it wasn't a big enough town to
merit a system of taxation. It was actually just a
very small farm province, so there wouldn't have been taxes
(12:02):
at this time. And you say in the article that
it's like the twelfth or thirteenth century before taxation takes
place in that area precisely, so that's pretty good evidence
against the ride. She would have had no reason to
do it exactly, so there really wasn't a ride. And
historians have been looking back at a dive and trying
to figure out why it is that we remember her
(12:23):
this way, And it's probably that the monks at the
abbey that she um patronized so generously wanted to honor
her in some way, and why they came up with
this story, I'm not sure. I'm sure they did not
imagine in their heart of hearts that centuries later she
would become such a sexualized object. You know. They wanted
(12:43):
her to be remembered as a very pious and religious woman.
So anyway, it sounds like the addition of a patriarchal
society later on kind of adding to it and distorting it.
And it also makes you wonder, like, where where would
this come from? Why would this one woman be tapped
to play this this role, to have taken this legendary
ride if she didn't actually do it, if there wasn't
(13:04):
some kernel of truth to it, So it doesn't it
kind of make you think like there's a there's a
grain of truth, like maybe she really did do it,
but maybe she was drunk, maybe it was just a dare.
And then all these other aspects get added to the
story later on and on and all, and they all
reflect the values of whatever society adds to it. I
I agree with that. And it really took off during
(13:24):
the Victorian era. And I'm such a Victorian nerd when
it comes down to it. So all spare yall a
dissertation on this. But when the version of the story
but the Peeping Tom, came out, there were all these
ballads and poems written about it, and it really took off.
And the Victorian era was one of severe oppression. You know,
there was no Son's really of sexuality, at least you know,
for public eyes. And this was also a time when
(13:46):
people were finally able to start affording housing. And it
used to be that, you know, people who didn't have
a lot of money, maybe they would live in quarters
together and there weren't separate rooms, and everything was on display,
not a lot of modesty. Yeah. Then suddenly there was
room and so people started, you know, taking care of
not showing themselves and not putting themselves on display. And
(14:07):
so the legend was sort of appropriated in this tone.
Will look what happens when you do put yourself on display?
Is there a reason for it? Is you know they're
justice for looking upon someone who doesn't want to be
gazed at. No, No, you go blinder structed by guy exactly,
which is why this year for Halloween, I'm gonna go
is God give you not get dive and I'll explain
to everyone who cares to listen. And people, you know,
(14:28):
try to undress me with their eyes, well, well strike
you blind. Normally here I would say thanks for clearing
that up, but I'm never going to say that again.
You don't, and if you do, I'm going I'm gonna
What am I gonna do? I'll strike you blind like
peeping down and with the pen. And by the same token,
(14:48):
I'm going to give up saying hold the phone, which
is something I want to do quite frequently. What are
you gonna do? If I say it? I will strike
your new jeck, wrestle, tear your jupiter blind own to yeah,
you really say, oh gosh, it really would say I
will do my utmost hardest time post to not say
(15:10):
hold the bump, Oh gosh, what's do? But if you're listening,
cover your eyes with your pods, and for the rest
of y'all, if you want to learn more about God
give you. You can read Why a Lady could dive
and take a naked horse stride on how stuff works
dot com dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com.
(15:33):
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, we welcome to the podcast
on editor Candu Skips and Joy to Day by staff
writer Josh Clark. It's always go well, so, Candice. I
(00:22):
was eating a box of delicious Godiva chocolates the other day,
my favorite. I ate the whole box by myself, and
as I was sitting there afterwards, with my face covered
in chocolate, I was looking at the at the top
of it, and they're in the flesh is Lady Godiva, um,
who apparently rode naked on horseback for some reason, um
(00:44):
some time ago, and I started wondering, you know, is
is that fact or fiction? Did Lady Godiva really ride
that horse naked? Well? That's actually please, I can't do
this anymore. I'm are you reacting to the chocolate? No, no, Cannis,
I'm not. Um. I'm just gonna level with you, Okay,
(01:04):
I can't. I can't live this lie any longer. I
know exactly whether or not Lady could Diva really rode
the horse? Okay, Like I you wrote this article, I
read it last night. I got to the end. I
know exactly what you're going to say. I know whether
it's fact, I know whether it's fiction. And I can't
do this anymore. It's too much of a strain to
pretend like I don't know. Okay, I'm sorry. I guess
(01:28):
I just ruined the podcast, is it? So? No? No, No,
it doesn't have to It doesn't have to be like
that between us. Okay, if you know what you're talking about,
and I know the answer, why don't we just talk
about it? Can we do that? I think so we
can do that? Okay, alright, because I mean, you know,
some of the other articles that we've talked about. I
(01:49):
even wrote. I mean, it's just ridiculous. I I now,
and I've known all along that you've known all along.
It's it's true. I was just trying to humor you.
I thought everybody would, you know, I want to play
like that, But let's play fair. Thanks by the rules.
We're very smart people. Maybe I'm a little bit smarter,
but you're cuddlier. So let's have that. All right. Well, cool,
(02:11):
let's try this alright. Back at square one. She's on
the chocolate box. She is she is? And uh, you know,
there was a reason that the guy who founded Good
Diva Chocolates gave and it had to do with them
her passion and lack of modesty, and that he thought
she was hot or something like that. Yeah, he thought
she had a lot of style. And you know, it's funny.
I was doing a little bit of research about Godive
(02:32):
and I found out that, um, people didn't actually start,
or women rather, didn't start riding side saddle on horses
until many centuries after Godiva. So it doesn't seem particularly
stylist to straddle a horse naked and ride through town. No,
I imagined that would leave very little to the imagine. Yeah,
but There's chocolates are delicious, the best. They are good.
(02:54):
They are good. And while I'm confessing, I had to
say I had no idea. She even rode side saddle
on the good Dive logo, So it's the only classy
thing to do. So well, let's back it up. Good,
did she or did she not take the naked horse ride?
I know the answer to this, Well, have at it.
Tell us what is that she did not? It would um?
I mean, because of the historical distortions, I imagine you
(03:17):
would call it faction. But really, ultimately, if you want
to get down to brass tacks, it doesn't appear that
she did right, So Goodiva, and I apologize to all
of the Welsh scholars out there who are going to
read me for probably mispronouncing her name was actually God
gafew No, no, you have to say it like you
have been around the office. I like to say God
(03:39):
gafe you and God give. That was another name for her. Um.
Josh has been making fun of me all morning because
you go, you say God, and you do this little
dip down and then up, and then you look very
pleased with yourself. I know I look sort of like
an animal when I do it. I really can't help it,
um anyway, So God Gafeu is her name. Eleventh century
(04:01):
woman uh and Anglo Saxon. I guess England is what
we would call it today. And she wasn't technically a
lady because back then that was a title reserve for
the queens, so she could have been a countess. She
married a count essentially or an earl. Yeah, Leah Frick
isn't that great name? My firstborn son Leo really happy do?
(04:23):
And she also could have been called in that time period,
would have been appropriate to say that she was Lea
Fric's bed partner, and that also translates into some sort
of Welsh business. Yeah yeah, so really how that it
when you read the article? So he was pretty wealthy.
Leo Frick essentially owned Mercia, which was this kingdom in
(04:44):
the center of modern day England, and it was right
across from Wales. And he was pretty powerful, right, I mean,
it wasn't just this very localized power. It extended around
the country. He's a big deal. He was a big deal.
And she was a pretty big deal too. She came
from a really wealthy family and so when she came
into the marriage, you know, with her property and her
money and his property and his money. I mean, wow,
(05:07):
didn'tn't wasn't she ruling her own? Didn't she own like
eight different places she did? Kingdoms or something? She certainly did,
one of which was Coventry, which is yeah, this is
the side where she supposedly took this naked horse ride,
which we know did not happen. So back in eleventh
century England, women were pretty important in the home and
(05:30):
one of their responsibilities was managing their wealth and the
family's wealth and dolling out money to different you know, beneficiaries,
and one of the things that lady Godiva chose to
give a lot of money to was the abbey and
their domain, and there was a Benedictine abbey in Coventry,
and she supposedly gave a ton of money and gold
(05:52):
and jewels, and she just gave it all and she
was recognized as a really, really pious and religious woman.
Which is funny because today when we hear lady could
die by we think of a very like sexually charged symbol,
which I think is, you know how dive a talcolates
at least, but want us to think of her. They
want us to think of sensuality and you know, decadence.
(06:14):
But it wasn't like that at all. So the story
of the horse ride do you want to take it? Well,
I guess I just wanted to throw in that from
what I read in the article, she seems, like you said,
very pious, but she also seems to have a sense
of daring and definitely a sense of humor because you
know why was she challenged to ride naked? Well that's
(06:34):
because her husband had supposedly imposed a really heavy tax
on the citizens of Coventry, and by this legend, she
went to him and said, I really want you to
lift this tax. And he responded, I'll tell you what.
You take off all your clothes and ride through the
center of town in the middle of the day on horseback,
and when you get back, I'll lift the tax. And
(06:56):
she was game. She was game. She said, are you sure?
Just to make sure he serious, and and he must
have thought that she wouldn't take him seriously, but she did.
I think she sort of went straight upstairs, des robed,
let down her hair, covered up all of her lady bits,
and gone on that horse and road. Yeah, not sid
not side, although supposedly uh in in later retellings of
(07:17):
the story, she um, well, the earl decreed that no
one could look, so she was going to just ride
through town no one could see except for again in
Peeping Tom, Keeping Tom and today, peeping Tom is an
expression or a turn of phrase that we use somewhat colloquially.
And I think most people would know what a peeping
(07:38):
tom was, you know, I would. I would go so
far as to say everybody, yeah, for sure. But I
don't think everybody knows necessarily that lady could dive on
peeping Tom or in her connected I had no idea
until I read this article actually, and so in the
first versions of The Lady Could Dive to Tail, Peeping
Tom didn't play a role. People were supposedly so thankful
and respectful of God give You that they, you know,
(08:02):
decided they wouldn't look at her. It was an act
of respect and homage to her for what she was
doing for them, And that was in Roger Windover's version.
That's another thing that kind of makes the diva legend
um a little unbelievable is that she doesn't appear in
in any history until about two years after death, precisely.
(08:23):
So he wrote that entry in ten fifty seven, I
think it was, and then later on there was another
guy who sort of took up the mantle and he
wrote the version that included Peeping Tom. And what's fishy
about this is that he cites the source named Galfreed,
and no one's really sure who that was. Was it
some sort of Jeffrey of that time period maybe, or
(08:46):
God Free of that time maybe? Yeah, they don't really know.
They don't really know. But his story included Peeping Tom,
and that was just a little bit more fun to recount. Really,
the fact that this beautiful woman writes naked through town
and there's this one I out of a whole ton
of people who cannot resist looking at her, but the
joke was on him a little bit. Yeah, um, I
(09:07):
found this a little disheartening. The one guy who looked
was struck either dead or blind by God, depending on
who tells the story. And I'm thinking it's a little harsh.
You know, every conception I have a lady could dive
it was that she was smoking hot. And I really
don't think that you should be struck blind for that
kind of thing, especially in this, in this piece of
(09:29):
art that you've included in the article. He's like up
in a balcony. It's not like he's right up on
r or anything like that. He's not about to jump
down onto the horse with her. He's just looking. Do
you have to get struck blind for that? You know?
I mean being Catholic, I understand I feel kind of
guilty for even thinking this, but it still seems a
little extreme to me. Well extreme or not, that's just
(09:50):
how it went. And actually the tension between the idea
of those scope of philiac someone who gets pleasure and
looking at things. I love that word. Yeah, I think
it's kind of fun. I actually didn't know the word
until I started researching this article. I thought maybe, I mean,
I guess it's pretty similar to being a voider, so
I knew it. That meant so sort of an a
(10:10):
mine is for me really in my voguad lesson of
the day, um and the person on display. So the
exhibitionists from this scapophiliac. When Sigmund Freud was later proposing
theories about sexual tensions and this sort of um odd
dichotomy between the looked at and the looker, or the
gazer and the gazed upon in our society, this was
a perfect example for him to use. But um, you
(10:33):
know it's funny because the peeping tom legend continued later on,
even in later centuries in England, when Coventry would have
a good dive at procession and people would actually parade
through town dressed up like a diva. And one of
the first processions, the guy tapped to play peeping tom
in the procession actually died and I don't remember how,
(10:55):
but he died, and everyone thought, okay, signed from God,
no more being toms. However, and these processions and these
processions continue today, don't they do it? Annually they do,
they do, yeah, And usually it's it's a woman, sometimes
it's a man. At least a long time ago, it
was like a young guy, sort of like in Shakespeare's
day when the boys play the female parts too. And
(11:17):
it used to it used to be that she would
wear a flesh colored body stocking and a wig. But
you know, in today's day and age, who knows, maybe
there's someone out there really straddling that horse. So let's
tear this legend apart, all right. First of all, it
doesn't first appear until two hundred years after it supposedly happened.
Right right there, there's exhibit A. Um, you know what
(11:39):
else is wrong with it? Well, there's the fact that
Godiva actually owned Coventry, So if she'd wanted taxes lowered,
she wouldn't have asked lia Frick. It would have been
her call because it was her land. And the other
problem is that it wasn't a big enough town to
merit a system of taxation. It was actually just a
very small farm province, so there wouldn't have been taxes
(12:02):
at this time. And you say in the article that
it's like the twelfth or thirteenth century before taxation takes
place in that area precisely, so that's pretty good evidence
against the ride. She would have had no reason to
do it exactly, so there really wasn't a ride. And
historians have been looking back at a dive and trying
to figure out why it is that we remember her
(12:23):
this way, And it's probably that the monks at the
abbey that she um patronized so generously wanted to honor
her in some way, and why they came up with
this story, I'm not sure. I'm sure they did not
imagine in their heart of hearts that centuries later she
would become such a sexualized object. You know. They wanted
(12:43):
her to be remembered as a very pious and religious woman.
So anyway, it sounds like the addition of a patriarchal
society later on kind of adding to it and distorting it.
And it also makes you wonder, like, where where would
this come from? Why would this one woman be tapped
to play this this role, to have taken this legendary
ride if she didn't actually do it, if there wasn't
(13:04):
some kernel of truth to it, So it doesn't it
kind of make you think like there's a there's a
grain of truth, like maybe she really did do it,
but maybe she was drunk, maybe it was just a dare.
And then all these other aspects get added to the
story later on and on and all, and they all
reflect the values of whatever society adds to it. I
I agree with that. And it really took off during
(13:24):
the Victorian era. And I'm such a Victorian nerd when
it comes down to it. So all spare yall a
dissertation on this. But when the version of the story
but the Peeping Tom, came out, there were all these
ballads and poems written about it, and it really took off.
And the Victorian era was one of severe oppression. You know,
there was no Son's really of sexuality, at least you know,
for public eyes. And this was also a time when
(13:46):
people were finally able to start affording housing. And it
used to be that, you know, people who didn't have
a lot of money, maybe they would live in quarters
together and there weren't separate rooms, and everything was on display,
not a lot of modesty. Yeah. Then suddenly there was
room and so people started, you know, taking care of
not showing themselves and not putting themselves on display. And
(14:07):
so the legend was sort of appropriated in this tone.
Will look what happens when you do put yourself on display?
Is there a reason for it? Is you know they're
justice for looking upon someone who doesn't want to be
gazed at. No, No, you go blinder structed by guy exactly,
which is why this year for Halloween, I'm gonna go
is God give you not get dive and I'll explain
to everyone who cares to listen. And people, you know,
(14:28):
try to undress me with their eyes, well, well strike
you blind. Normally here I would say thanks for clearing
that up, but I'm never going to say that again.
You don't, and if you do, I'm going I'm gonna
What am I gonna do? I'll strike you blind like
peeping down and with the pen. And by the same token,
(14:48):
I'm going to give up saying hold the phone, which
is something I want to do quite frequently. What are
you gonna do? If I say it? I will strike
your new jeck, wrestle, tear your jupiter blind own to yeah,
you really say, oh gosh, it really would say I
will do my utmost hardest time post to not say
(15:10):
hold the bump, Oh gosh, what's do? But if you're listening,
cover your eyes with your pods, and for the rest
of y'all, if you want to learn more about God
give you. You can read Why a Lady could dive
and take a naked horse stride on how stuff works
dot com dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com.
(15:33):
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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