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Hymen

membrane that surrounds or partially covers the external vaginal opening

The hymen is a thin piece of mucosal tissue that surrounds or partially covers the vaginal opening. A small percentage are born with hymens that are imperforate and completely obstruct the vaginal canal. It forms part of the vulva and is similar in structure to the vagina. The term comes straight from the Greek, for 'membrane'. In older literature, it is often called the maidenhead.

Women weep for their lost maidenheads
I’ll clout ’em, I’ll mend ’em, I’ll knock in a pin

Quotes

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  • If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her,
    And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid:
    Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate:
    And the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her;
    And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city.
    And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him;
    And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.
    But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:
    Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.
  • “Nausicaa,
    How bare thy mother such a careless child?
    Neglected all thy rich attire is piled:
    Yet nigh thy wedding is, when thou must wear
    Fair raiment on thyself, and bring it fair
    To them that lead thee; for it causeth fame
    To mount abroad for good, to go thus clad,
    And maketh father's heart and mother's glad.
    Come therefore, at the daybreak let us fare
    A-washing; I will also go, to be
    Thy workfellow, and get thee quickly sped,—
    For thou shalt not rest long in maidenhead:—
    The best of all our men are wooing thee
    In this Phaeacian land, where thou wast born.”
    • Homer, Odyssey, VI
    • W. G. Headlam, Letters and Poems, with a Memoir (1910), pp. 81-94
  • I throw my apple towards you. If you will love me, take it
      And give me in repayment your own maidenhead:
    If your will is what I would not, yet keep it still; and make it
      A lesson of how swiftly all loveliness is fled.
    • Plato (?), Anthologia Palatina, 5, 79
    • F. L. Lucas, A Greek Garland (1939)
  • All day I heard your high heart-broken laughter,
      swallow, and, hearing, cried, ‘Is there no place
    or time when you forget, Pandîon’s daughter,
      your maidenhood, and Têreus, King of Thrace?’
    • Pamphilus, Anthologia Palatina, 9, 57
    • Humbert Wolfe, "The Swallow", in The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (1938)
    • Norman Douglas, Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology (1928)
  • Why hoard your maidenhood? There’ll not be found
    A lad to love you, girl, under the ground.
    Love’s joys are for the quick; but when we’re dead
    It’s dust and ashes, girl, will go to bed.
    • Asclepiades of Samos, Anthologia Palatina, 5, 85
    • R. A. Furness, Translations from the Greek Anthology (Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1931), p. 45
    • Andrew Lang, Grass of Parnassus, 1st ed. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1888), p. 119
    • Robert Bland, Collections from the Greek Anthology (1813), p. 5
    • F. L. Lucas, Greek Poetry for Everyman (1951), p. 318
  • She hating as a haynous crime the bonde of bridely bed
    Demurely casting downe hir eyes, and blushing somwhat red,
    Did folde about hir fathers necke with fauning armes: and sed:
    Deare father, graunt me while I live my maidenhead for to have,
    As to Diana here tofore hir father freely gave.
    Thy father (Daphne) could consent to that thou doest require,
    But that thy beautie and thy forme impugne thy chaste desire:
    So that thy will and his consent are nothing in this case,
    By reason of the beautie bright that shineth in thy face.
  • An adult man who engaged in intercourse with a minor girl less than three years old has done nothing, as intercourse with a girl less than three years old is tantamount to poking a finger into the eye. In the case of an eye, after a tear falls from it another tear forms to replace it. Similarly, the ruptured hymen of the girl younger than three is restored.
  • With margerain jentyll,
    The flowre of goodlyhede,
    Embrowdred the mantill
    Is of your maydenhede.
    • John Skelton, "To mastres Margery Wentworthe"
    • The Garlande of Laurell (1528)
  • Saith she, “Yet liever I were dead,
    Than I should lose my maidenhead,
      And all for love of men.”
    • Michael Drayton, "The Ballad of Dowsabel"
    • The Shepherd’s Garland (1593); Poems Lyrick and Pastorall (1605); Works, Folio (1619)
  • The custome was that euery maid did weare,
    During her maidenhead, a silken Sphere
    About her waste, aboue her inmost weede,
    Knit with Minevuas knot, and that was freede
    By the faire Bridegrome on the manage night,
    With many ceremonies of delight:
    And yet eternisde Hymens tender Bride,
    To suffer it dissolu’d so sweetly cride.
    The maids that heard so lou’d, and did adore her,
    They wisht with all their hearts to suffer for her.
    So had the Matrons, that with Confits stood
    About the chamber, such affectionate blood,
    And so true feeling of her harmeles paines,
    That euery one a showre of Confits raines.
    For which the Brideyouths scrambling on the ground,
    In noyse of that sweet haile her cryes were drownd.
    And thus blest Hymen ioyde his gracious Bride,
    And for his ioy was after deifide.
  • Have ye any crack’d maidenheads, to new leach or mend?
    Have ye any old maidenheads to sell or to change?
    Bring ’em to me, with a little pretty gin,
    I’ll clout ’em, I’ll mend ’em, I’ll knock in a pin,
    Shall make ’em as good maids again,
    As ever they have been.
    If your daughters on their beds,
    Have bowed or crack’d their maidenheads;
    If, in a coach, with too much tumbling,
    They chance to cry, fy, fo, what fumbling!
    If her foot slip, and down fall she,
    And break her leg above the knee;
    The one and thirtieth of February let this be ta’en,
    And they shall be arrant maids again.
    • John Taylor, The Loyal Subject (1647), act 3, sc. 5
  • As unthrifts groan in straw for their pawn’d beds,
    As women weep for their lost maidenheads,
    When both are without hope or remedy,
    Such an untimely grief I have for thee.
  • Netts, of passions finest thred,
    Snaring Poems, will be spred,
    All, to catch thy maiden-head.
  • Joy to the Bridegroome and the Bride
    That lye by one anothers side!
    O fie upon the Virgin Bedds,
    No losse is gain but Maiden heads.
    Love quickly send the time may be
    When I shall deal my Rosemary!
  • Earth’s not so coy as you are now.
    But willingly admits the plow.
    For how had man or beast been fed,
    If she had kept her maiden head?
    • Thomas Randolph, "A Pastorall Courtship"
    • Poems (1638)
  • Teares, quickly fled,
    And vaine, as those are shed
    For a dying Maydenhead.
    • Richard Crashaw, "Wishes to his Supposed Mistresse"
    • The Delights of the Muses (1646)
  • Lasses like Autumne Plums did drop,
    And Lads, indifferently did crop
    A Flower, and a Maiden-head.
    • Richard Lovelace, "Love made in the first Age: To Chloris"
    • Posthume Poems (1659)
  • There's nane that gaes by Carterhaugh
    But they leave him a wad,
    Either their rings, or green mantles,
    Or else their maidenhead.
  • Thy Beauty shall no more be found,
    Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
    My ecchoing Song: then Worms shall try
    That long preserv’d Virginity:
    And your quaint Honour turn to dust;
    And into ashes all my Lust.
  • Have you not in a chimney seen
    A sullen faggot, wet and green,
    How coyly it receives the heat
    And at both ends does fume and sweat?
    So fares it with the harmless maid
    When first upon her back she’s laid;
    But the kind experienced dame
    Cracks, and rejoices in the flame.
  • And thou, O! dear, delightful bed,
    The altar where Her maidenhead,
    With burning cheeks, and down cast eyes,
    With panting breasts, and kind replies,
    And other due solemnity,
    Was offer’d up to love and me.
  • And, God knows, I thought my Money was as safe as my Maidenhead.
  • The Membrane call'd Hymen, is a Sign or Note of Virginity, because 'tis not to be found in any but Virgins. That there is such a thing 'tis not to be doubted, we have such great Authorities for it. But in Sickly young Girls, or such as are of a wanton temper, 'tis not so perfect as in a Healthy young Maid, that is Vertuous in Thought and in Deed. ... In the first coition Pain and Bloodshed ensues upon breaking it. Its use is to defend the Internal Parts.
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