Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/221

Rh her vagina, and thus deprive her of virginity. Hence her second name, Bolutukwa: bo, female, prefix litukwa, dripping water. In other myths of origin the means of piercing the hymen are not mentioned, but it is often explicitly stated that the ancestress was without a man, and could, therefore, have no sexual intercourse. When asked in so many words how it was that they bore children without a man, the natives would mention, more or less coarsely or jestingly, some means of perforation which they could easily have used, and it was clear that no more was necessary.

Moving into another mythological dimension—into present-day legends of countries far to the north—we find the marvellous land of Kaytalugi, peopled exclusively by sexually rabid women. They are so brutally profligate that their excesses kill every man thrown by chance upon their shores, and even their own male children never attain maturity before they are sexually done to death. Yet these women are very prolific, producing many children, male and female. If a native is asked how this can be, how these females become pregnant if there are no men, he simply cannot understand such an absurd question. These women, he will say, destroy their virginity in all sorts of ways if they cannot get hold of a man to torture to death. And they have got their own baloma, of course, to give them children.

I have adduced these mythical instances first, for they clearly demonstrate the native point of view; the need for perforation, and the absence of any idea concerning Rh