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 MaidenThis is my short narrative and relevant references from the Books where Maidens are mentioned. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. Arrive at your own conclusions. I wish you well, Fogaban The Gorean Maiden is not always a young, virgin Free Woman . . . depending on where you live and the culture you are used to. In order to be all encompassing, I've listed every instance of the word Maiden. Now, you can pull out your own copy of the book and read all the surrounding text. The girl was now quite close to me, and yet had not seen me. Her head was down. She was clad in Robes of Concealment, but their texture and color were a far cry from the glorious vanities often expressed in such garments, the silken purples, yellows and scarlets that the Gorean maiden delighted in; the robes were of coarse brown cloth, tattered and caked with dirt. Everything about her bespoke misery and dejection. The bracelets contrasted with the meanness of her coarse brown garment. Thorn fingered the garment. "We will get rid of this," he told her. "Soon, when you have been properly prepared, you will be dressed in costly pleasure silk, given sandals perhaps, scarves, veils and jewels, garments to gladden the heart of a maiden." Though on Gor the free maiden is by custom expected to see her future companion only after her parents have selected him, it is common knowledge that he is often a youth she has met in the marketplace. He who speaks for her hand, especially if she is of low caste, is seldom unknown to her, although the parents and the young people as well solemnly act as though this were the case. The same maiden whom her father must harshly order into the presence of her suitor, the same shy girl who, her parents approvingly note, finds herself delicately unable to raise her eyes in his presence, is probably the same girl who slapped him with a fish yesterday and hurled such a stream of invective at him that his ears still smart, and all because he had accidentally happened to be looking in her direction when an unpredictable wind had, in spite of her best efforts, temporarily disarranged the folds of her veil. In the distance, perhaps some forty pasangs away, I saw a set of ridges, lofty and steep, rearing out of a broad, yellow meadow of talenders, a delicate, yellow-petaled flower, often woven into garlands by Gorean maidens. In their own quarters, unveiled Gorean women, with their family or lovers, might fix talenders in their hair. A crown of talenders was often worn by the girl at the feast celebrating her Free Companionship. I saw the other girls some thirty yards away, in camisks, the cheapest of slave garments, laughing and talking to one another, disporting themselves as pleasurably as free maidens might have. I almost did not notice the chain that lay hidden in the grass. It passed through the ankle ring of each and, at each end, encircled a tree to which it was padlocked. He who had captured the girl would place his sword to her breast and utter the ritual phrases of enslavement. They were the last words she would hear as a free woman. Weep, Free Maiden.Outlaw of Gor Book 2 Page 205 I smiled to myself as I thought of the small things on my old world that at such remoteness perhaps reenacted the ancient ceremony of the caves, the carrying of the bride over the threshold, perhaps as a prisoner, the tiny wedding bands, perhaps a small reminder of the primitive thongs that bound the wrists of the first bride, or perhaps later of the golden manacles fastened on the wrists of the daughters of kings, captive maidens led in triumph through cheering streets to the bondage of slave girls. In short order then Kamchak took the key over the head of Aphris of Turia and sprang open the retaining rings. He then led the numb, unresisting Turian maiden to his kaiila. This year, as it turned out, the Wagon Peoples had done exceedingly well in the games of Love War, - a bit of news we picked up with the Paga - and about seventy percent of the Turian maidens had been led slave from the stakes to which they had been manacled. "On the other hand," said Kamchak, "I may feed you to the kaiila." Timidly Aphris rose and went to the thin rep-cloth blanket that was her bedding near the boots of Kamchak. Hidden in the blanket there was a faded yellow piece of cloth, which she had folded very small. He unlocked the door and ordered the Turian maiden forth, commanding her to stand before him, head down. As a matter of course various goods and riches were heaped about his throne, and among them, as part of the booty, there knelt some of the most beautiful of Turia's maidens, clad only in the Sirik, but at his right knee, unchained and clad Kajir, there knelt Aphris of Turia. At that juncture, as I recall, Elizabeth was kneeling on top of the Turian maiden with her hands in her hair pounding her head up and down in the dirt. Behind the girl, in robes almost as rich as hers, were two other high-born maidens. "My maidens," said Vivina, "will also be ransomed, though their ransoms will be less than mine." And bound at the prow of the first forty ships, following the flagship, beginning with the Dorna, and then the tarn ships and the first ten and largest of the captured round ships, was a high-born beauty, once intended to be the maiden of Cos' Ubara, now, like herself, destined only for the brand and collar of a slave girl. My maidens?" she asked. "Slaves," I said. "Myself?" she asked. "Slave," said I. She closed her eyes. In the five days it had taken to reach Port Kar from the scene of the engagement with the treasure fleet, due to the slowness of the round ships, I had not kept Vivina, and her maidens, of course, at the prows of the ships. I had only placed them there in victory, and now again, for the entry to Port Kar. "When the treasures have been checked, tallied, and appraised, which should take some four or five weeks," I told her, "you, with your maidens, in the chains of slave girls, will be displayed, together with samples of, and full accountings of, the other treasures, before the Council of Captains." This afternoon I had presented her, with her maidens, in the chains of slave girls, together with portions of the treasures of the treasure fleet, and accountings of the balance thereof, before the Council of Captains of Port Kar. They had been beautiful, in silver throat coffle, their wrists bound behind their backs in golden slave bracelets, kneeling as pleasure slaves among the jewels, the piled gold, and the heaps of silk and kegs of spices. She who was to have been the Ubara of Cos was in the city of Port Kar only booty. I had also had her maidens marked and collared, following the meeting of the Council of Captains. Also I had toyed with the idea of opening a paga tavern in the center of the city, the most opulent in Port Kar, perhaps, called the Tavern of the Forty Maidens. There were few in Port Kar who would not be eager to patronize such an establishment, that they might be served by the high-born beauties of Tyros. It would be a great triumph in Tyros, to bring the great Marlenus, naked, in the chains of a slave, branded, before their council. Doubtless they would first bring him so through the streets, between jeering throngs, chained to the back of a tharlarion wagon, white-silk maidens of Tyros dancing beside him, casting love blossoms upon him. Marlenus would doubtless make great holiday in Tyros. He would march in their triumph, branded, naked, chained to the back of a tharlarion wagon, amid blossoms cast by white-silk maidens dancing beside him. Even slave children, incidentally, are seldom abused or treated poorly, and are given much freedom, until they reach their young adulthood. It is then, of course, that they are taught that they are slaves. Men come, and the young male is tied and taken to the market. If the young slave is a female she may or may not be sent to a market. Many young slave maidens are raised almost as daughters in a home. It is often a startling and frightening day for such a girl when, one morning, she finds herself suddenly, unexpectedly, put in a collar and whipped, and made to begin to pay the price of her now-blossomed slave beauty. More than fifty slave girls, their hair coiffured high on their heads, clad in sleeveless, classic gowns of white silk, were aligned on the walk nearest the wall containing the iron door, that leading within to the halls of the fortress. To the music of the musicians, near the iron door, they performed a most decorous dance, slowly and gracefully lifting their arms and turning, facing first one side and then the other. In their hands they held baskets of flower petals. The dance was the sort that free maidens of a city might perform to honor and welcome visiting dignitaries, or the ambassador and his entourage, of a foreign city. Had their gowns not been sleeveless, and had they not been barefoot, and had their throats not been locked in collars, one might have mistaken them for free women. I could smell viands, too, cooking, the delicious odors of them emanating from the holding. A feast was being prepared. There are many types of slave garments, of course, other than such obvious categories as tunics, camisks and Ta-Teeras. Pleasure silks, in all varieties, and swirling, diaphanous dancing silks might be mentioned. The leathers forced on the slave maidens of the Wagon Peoples, taught to care for the bosk and please their masters, too, might be called to mind.
The oars entered the water. The bow turned toward Victoria. There the alarm bar was ringing in victory. I could hear, too, the shouting of crowds and the singing of maidens. Indeed, sometimes a young fellow will have his hair greased and braided, and will dress himself in finery and paint, and simply ride about the camp, parading, in effect, before his fellow villagers, and, in particular, the maidens. The vanity of human beings is interesting. From my own point of view it seemed that Hci retained a great deal of what must once have been an unusual degree of savage handsomeness. The marking of his countenance, though surely not what a fellow would be likely to elect for cosmetic purposes, did not seem to me sufficiently serious to warrant his reaction to it. It might even have been regarded by some, as I have suggested, in the rude heraldry of the plains, as an enhancement to their appearance. Surely the maidens of the Isbu did not seem to find the mark objectionable. Many of them would have been much pleased had Hci, such a splendid warrior, deigned to pay them court. But no longer did Hci come to sit cross-legged outside their lodges, playing the love flute, to lure them forth under the Gorean moons. "You, too, Bloketu," said Cuwignaka, looking up at the mounted girl. "Do not speak to my maiden," said the girl on the kaiila. "Iwoso is a Yellow Knife," said Cuwignaka. "She was taken when she was twelve. Bloketu is the daughter of Watonka." "Perhaps my maiden remembers you," said the girl. 'Petuste' means "Firebrand." More broadly, of course, it can refer to any piece of burning wood. He was the brother of Canka, of course, Fire-Steel. This was the first time I had ever heard the former name of Cuwignaka. "Yes," said Cuwignaka, "in a sense. But she is really almost free. She is a girl's maiden." I did not doubt but what the Fleer and the Yellow Knives, and other peoples, too, might have similar ceremonies, in which, in one way or another, a similar profession might take place, there being danced or enacted also by a woman of another group, perhaps even, in those cases, by a maiden of the Kaiila. "Maybe," he said. "Is a maiden of the Isbu coming out to cut meat?" "Come, Iwoso, my dear maiden," said Bloketu, "let us go. We do not need to stay here, to listen to the prattle of this silly girl in the dress of a white woman." "She is only my maiden," said Bloketu. "If you wish to court Iwoso," said Bloketu, "you may come to the lodge tonight and sit outside, cross-legged, playing the love flute. I will then decide whether or not I will permit my maiden to leave the lodge." "Do you dispute me, my maiden?" asked Bloketu. "She might look well naked," said Hci. "You are speaking of my maiden," said Bloketu, scandalized. "Have no fear," said Bloketu. "You are my maiden." "Do not anger me, maiden," said Bloketu, "or I may send you to him for the night, without your clothes and tied, maybe with a quirt tied around your neck, like you were a white female slave!" Iwoso was immediately silent. "That is better, my maiden," smiled Bloketu. "Remember you are not yet important." "Are you obedient, my maiden?" asked Bloketu of Iwoso, sweetly. She was swiftly followed by Iwoso, her maiden. Thus," said Cuwignaka, "Bloketu would be important, being the daughter of such a man, and even Iwoso, only a slave, would become celebrated among several tribes, serving as a maiden in so rich a household." "You may speak before my maiden," said Bloketu. "What does it matter? Why should a slave not speak before a slave?" "I myself had little doubt as to the fate of the lovely, betrayed traitress. I recalled the coils of supple rope which Iwoso, her maiden, had worn at her belt. Too, I had little doubt that Iwoso, long before the attack, working in secret, in anticipation, had prepared a beaded collar for her mistress. Iwoso, for her part in the attack, would now be an important woman among the Yellow Knives. A woman of such importance, of course, should have her own maiden. "Do you think she will make her a good maiden?" I asked. "Are you insolent, Maiden?" inquired Iwoso. "No, Mistress," said Bloketu, quickly. "Even the daughters of Kaiila chieftains are worthy only to be the slaves and maidens of Yellow Knives," said Iwoso. "How offensive that I was once your maiden," said Iwoso. "Do you beg, rather, to remain my maiden?" asked Iwoso, amused. "Yes! Yes!" said Bloketu. "Beg properly," said Iwoso. "Bloketu, your maiden, begs mercy of her Mistress," said Bloketu. "She begs to be permitted to remain the maiden of her mistress." "Please be silent, Lady Iwoso!" I called to the Yellow-Knife maiden. "As one of you was once the daughter of a Kaiila chieftain, Watonka, who was once a great warrior amongst us, and was once my friend, and one of you was once her maiden, I shall not have you subjected to tortures." "Your people love you," had said Ligurious. I had lifted my hand to the crowds, and bowed and smiled. I had done these things with graciousness and dignity, as I had been instructed to do by Ligurious. It had been a thrilling experience for me, seeing the people, the shops, the streets, the buildings. It was the first time I had been outside the grounds of the palace. The streets were clean and beautiful. The smell of flowers was in the air. Petals had been strewn by veiled maidens before the path of the palanquin. "I do not understand," she said. "Where are my maidens?" "In the pens," said Samos. "The pens?" she gasped. "Yes," said Samos. "But do not fear for them. They are perfectly safe - in their chains." "Make my maidens slaves," she said. "They are good for little else. But I am a free woman!" "Do you think you are better than they?" asked Samos. "Yes," she said. "You are no different from them," he said. "You, too, are only a female." "You seemed to think earlier," said Samos, "that such a slavery might be all right for your maidens, but not for yourself." I looked to one side, to the ground at the side of the raised platform. Two girls were there, standing back, waiting. Judging from the brevity of their bell-like skirts, given that shape doubtless by a lining of crinoline, and their bare arms, with puffed, short sleeves, I took them to be Saucy Maidens, probably a Bina and a Brigella. "Oh!" she cried in horror, cringing and half crouching down, trying to cover herself as well as she could, in maidenly distress. "What have you done, sir? Explain yourself, instantly!" In the fifth, and last division, we saw a victory feast. Naked maidens, doubtless of the vanquished, served at the low tables, and, in the open space between these tables, and among them, danced. There are, incidentally, certain slavers who specialize in the capture of free women for the stage. Too, it is a joke of young bucks to capture an arrogant free maiden and sell her to a theatrical producer out of the city. Then, later, they enjoy her performances, both on the stage and in the tents later. The dance in the circle, as one might have gathered, was not the stately dance of free maidens, even in which, of course, the maidens, though scarcely admitting this even to themselves, experience something of the stimulatory voluptuousness of movement, but slave dance, that form of dance, in its thousands of variations, in which a female may excitingly and beautifully, marvelously and fulfillingly, express the depths and profoundities of her nature. In such dance the woman moves as a female, and shows herself as a female, in all her excitingness and beauty. It is no wonder that women love such dance, in which dance they are so desirable and beautiful, in which dance they feel so free, so sexual, so much a slave. Gorean free women, at least in the high cities, almost always wear veils in public, although some women of the lower castes are occasionally careless in this particular, permitting lax arrangements, and such, especially the maidens. "She is an ice maiden," said Cichek. Where men are concerned, females make the best bait beasts. The application of the "lure girl" is familiar in many locales. One of the few times a female slave is permitted to don the garments of a free woman without being slain is when she is used in such a role. Sometimes they are put on the bridges late at night, in the light of the moons, and when a marauding tarnsman makes his strike, the city's tarnsmen may take flight and close in upon him. A common stratagem is for a group of seeming maidens to be noted sporting outside a city's walls, perhaps tossing a ball about, or such, and laughing, and chatting, with one another. When foreign tarnsmen, intent on plying chain luck, descend to acquire this seemingly vulnerable trove of loveliness, they are surprised, for numerous guardsmen emerge suddenly from concealed pits and encircle them. Free women, incidentally, are almost never used in such a role. If one were she might be likely to be soon stripped and found in her own collar, that is, in her master's collar. "They are cringing," said Cabot. "Are they her hand maidens?" "It is true you are far from Oxford," he said. "But many maidens of Oxford might envy you the opportunity to dance before such men." Tassa powder is a harmless, tasteless, swift-acting drug. It is commonly used in the taking of women. It might be introduced into the parties of maidens, into the private, candle-lit suppers of high-born beauties, into the beverages of inns or vendors. "Can you dance?" I asked the girl. "The flower dance of the free maiden," she said, frightened, her head held back, by the hair. "Yes," she said, "the girls have watched you watching me, and they tell me things. You look upon me as a master upon a coveted slave. As a slaver on a maiden of choice, unaware in the baths, as a hungry sleen on the grazing tabuk. Doubtless in your mind you have put your bonds on me many times! How many times, in your mind, have I lain naked before you, helpless, bound hand and foot?" "One came before as you," he said, "days ago, seemingly, too, of the Merchants. We welcomed him, we regaled him, we entertained him, we shared paga, our maidens danced before him, we showed him hospitality. Two days later, following his departure, they came, with fire and chains. They took even the trinkets, precious to us, for which we had traded." "There are women there?" asked Aktis. "They are so brazen, so shameless?" asked Aktis. "Surely the maidens of Nicosia did not go about veiled," I said. "It was a village," he said. "Everyone knew everyone. And there was much work to do, by both men and women." "There will be a parade," said the bystander. "There will be banners and streamers on the houses, perfume in the air, flowers cast by free maidens in the streets." "You missed the free maidens casting flowers," said Clitus. "There will be more toward the end," said Thurnock. "How were they?" asked Sakim. "Too young," said Thurnock. "Give them five years." "Remember they are free, even then," I cautioned him. "Here, friend Sakim," said Clitus, "are more free maidens, joyously dancing in flowing garments, casting flowers, mostly dinas, talenders, and veminium, before the wheels of the final float. Do not miss these." |       
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