When not at war, Math, the uncle of Welsh goddess Arianrhod, could only survive with his feet resting in the lap of a virgin. Arianrhod’s brother Gwydion suggested she could help in this department since she was still chaste. To test her purity, she first had to step over Math’s magic rod, but her wanton ways were discovered as, the moment she did so, she gave birth to a boy and a blob, revealing the truth. Although the blob grew into a boy, she took out her anger on him and denied him a name, arms and a wife.
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‘I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.’ Oscar Levant
11 people famous for being virgins
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Elizabeth I • Sir Isaac Newton • Immanuel Kant • Mother Teresa
• Louis XVI • Havelock Ellis • George Bernard Shaw • Mary, Mother of
Jesus • Joan of Arc • Brooke Shields • Britney Spears
‘It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined
that virginity could be a virtue.’ Voltaire, c. 1735
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‘What men desire is a virgin who is a whore.’
Edward Dahlberg, Reasons of the Heart, 1965
‘So a maiden, while she remains untouched, remains dear to her own;
but when she has lost her chaste flower with sullied body, she
remains neither lovely to boys nor dear to girls.’ Catullus (84-54bc)