VIRGINITY AND ITS TRADITIONS.
'unpierced,'[1] and vary from eight or nine years to the nubile age. It is even easier to obtain a young girl before she is nubile than afterwards, on account of the certainty of her not bearing any children. The price is within the range of all purses, according to quality, and you can have a negro girl, warranted 'unpierced' (belonging to the category of domestic slaves), for the modest sum of from eight to sixteen shillings. Of course, the respectable matron pockets half this sum for her honorarium. ……
"……The 'unpierced' soon lose their right to the title when they have to do with a Toubab, but, on account of the size of their genital parts, the loss of their maidenhead is not such a serious affair for them as it would be for a little French girl who was not yet nubile. I have never remarked in a little negress, who had been deflowered by a White, the valvular inflammation, which, with us, is noticed as the result of premature copulation before the parts are sufficiently developed. ……If the reader will remember that the European, who is below the average dimensions in regard to his penis, is like a little boy in proportion to the negress of ten or twelve years old, it is not difficult to imagine that the negress he has deflowered can entirely take in the yard of the White, the dimensions of which are much less than that of the adult black.
- ↑ C.f. The Thousand Nights and a Night, (Sir Richard F. Burton; the privately printed and uncastrated editions), where the expression is common. "……He found her a pearl unpierced." Again: "……went in unto the Princess and found her jewel which had been hidden, an union pearl unthridden, and a filly that none but he had ridden……" Compare, also, the French erotic slang percer (to pierce), signifying the act of sexual intercourse. (Farmer: Slang and its Analogues; p. 25, vol. 6; Vocabula Amatoria, etc.)
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