[16] Brantôme, apparently, had a poor opinion of Spartan virginity. “What kind of virtue was it?” he asks. (Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies.) “Why! on their solemn feast-days the Spartan maids were used to sing and dance in public stark naked with the lads, and even wrestle in the open market place,—the which however was done in all honesty and good faith, so History saith. But what sort of honesty and purity was this, we may well ask, to look on at these pretty maids so performing publicly? Honesty was it never a whit, but pleasure in the sight of them, and especially of their bodily movements and dancing postures, and above all in their wrestling; and chiefest of all when they came to fall one atop of the other, as they say in Latin: ‘She underneath, he atop; he underneath, she atop.’ You will never persuade me ‘twas all honesty and purity herein with these Spartan maidens. I ween there is never chastity so chaste that would not have been shaken thereby, or that, so making in public and by day these feint assaults, they did not presently in privity and by night and on assignation proceed to greater combats and night attacks.”
[17] Havelock Ellis, op. cit., vol. 6: Sex in Relation to Society, p. 163.
[18] C.f. the Latin infibulare=to clasp, buckle, or button together. (Smith’s Latin-English dictionary.) The noun fibula can be translated: (1) a clasp, buckle, pin, latchet, brace; (2) a surgical instrument for drawing together the edges of a gaping wound; (3) a ring drawn through the prepuce to prevent copulation. Celsus, Martial and Juvenal use the word in this sense. “The ancient Romans prevented actors from copulating, with the object of preserving their voices. Martial speaks of singers who sometimes broke the ring, and whom it was necessary to bring back again to the blacksmith.” (Jacobus X—, op. cit.)
[19] Kruptadia: Heilbronn, 1883: Henninger Frères: vol. 1: Secret Stories from the Russian, No. 32. Also Contes Secrets Russes: Paris: Liseux, 1891.
[20] Literally: “put it in pawn.”
[21] A verst would be about 1,170 yards. The virtue of the ring was indeed remarkable!
[22] Contes Secrets Russes translate: “His yard stretched forth, hurled the driver from his seat, passed beyond the team of horses, and reached out in front of the carriage for a distance of seven versts.”
[23] The Kruptadia version says: “As if flies had just tickled his yard.”
[24] The main theme of these foregoing contes—the yard which increases to gigantic proportions—is not confined to Russian folk-lore. In Kruptadia, vol. 2: Some Erotic Folk-Lore from Scotland, we find the following:—A man and a woman were in each other’s embraces. The man was succuba. His yard began to enlarge and enlarge and lift the woman. When she was nearly reaching the roof she exclaimed: “Farewell freens, farewell foes, For I’m awa’ to heaven On a pintel’s nose.”
[25] Kruptadia: Heilbronn: Henninger Frères, 1884: Breton Folk Lore.