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Rh the fertilizing value of the semen. But there are some convincing present-day instances which show that the natives believe that a girl can be with child without previous sexual intercourse. Thus, there are some women so ugly and repulsive that no one believes that they can ever have had intercourse (save, of course, for those few who know better, but who are very careful to keep silent from shame; see ch. x, sec. 2). There is Tilapo'i, now an old woman, who was famous for her hideousness in youth. She has become blind, was always almost an idiot, and had a repulsive face and deformed body. Her unattractiveness was so notorious that she became the subject of a saying: Kwoy Tilapo'i ("have connection with Tilapo'i"), a form of abuse used in mild chaff (ch. xiii, sec. 4). Altogether she is an infinite source and pivot of all kinds of matrimonial and obscene jokes, all based on the presumed impossibility of being Tilapo'i's lover or prospective husband. I was assured, over and over again, that no one ever could have had connection with her. Yet this woman has had a child, as the natives would triumphantly point out, when I tried to persuade them that only by intercourse can children be produced.

Again, there is the case of Kurayana, a woman of Sinaketa, whom I never saw, but who, I was told, was "so ugly that any man would be ashamed" to have intercourse with her. This saying implies that social shame would be an even stronger deterrent than sexual repulsion, an assumption which shows that my informant was not a bad practical psychologist. Kurayana, as thoroughly chaste as anyone could be—by necessity, if not by virtue— Rh