Sheela na gig is a non-definitional term applied to figurative carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva. They are architectural grotesques, almost all of them crudely carved. They were first described with this name in Ireland, and the term was applied to similar figures in Britain. Exhibitionist figures of both sexes are found throughout much of Western Europe[1][2] on cathedrals, castles, and other buildings. The greatest concentrations can be found in France, Britain, Spain and Ireland (in that order), sometimes together with male figures. Ireland, being the country in which they were first identified, was once thought to have the greatest number of surviving sheela na gig carvings; Joanne McMahon and Jack Roberts cite 101 examples in Ireland and 45 examples in Britain.[3] However, many more examples have been found in Britain in recent years, and there are hundreds in France. The best-known example is a 12th century figure on the Romanesque church at Kilpeck in Herefordshire, England.

Most of the Irish figures are post-Romanesque and are crude, sometimes damaged. More than half the British figures are Romanesque in Romanesque contexts, and those in France and Spain are almost all Romanesque. The Romanesque figures are often very expertly carved, and most of them are supporting corbels on corbel-tables on apses or façades of churches. ø

Some people have thought that the carvings may have been used to ward off death, evil and demons.[1][2] Other grotesque carvings, such as gargoyles and hunky punks, were frequently part of church decorations all over Europe. It is commonly said that their purpose was to keep evil spirits away (see apotropaic magic). Post-Romanesque examples are often are positioned over doors or windows, presumably to protect these openings.

ORIGIN

Scholars disagree about the origins of the figures. James Jerman and Anthony Weir believe that exhibitionist figures were first carved in and on churches in West-Central France late in the 11th century, moving farther afield, especially to Britain and Spain thereafter, and on to Ireland in the late 12th century.[2] Jerman and Weir's work was a continuation of research begun by Jørgen Andersen, who wrote The Witch on the Wall (1977), the first serious book on sheela na gigs.[1] Eamonn Kelly, Keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, draws attention to the distribution of sheela na gigs in Ireland to support Weir and Jerman's theory;[4] almost all of the surviving in situ sheela na gigs are found in areas of Anglo-Norman conquest (12th century). The areas that remained "native Irish" have few sheela na gigs.[4] Weir and Jerman also argue that their location on churches and the grotesque features of the figures, by medieval standards, suggests that they represented female lust as a terrible and sinful corruption of luxury (Luxuria, 'luxure' in French: there is no corresponding word in English).[2] The other terrible sin of luxury was Avaritia, the accumulation of cash, an even more frequent subject of 12th century condemnation on churches.

Another theory, espoused by Joanne McMahon and Jack Roberts without much evidence, is that the carvings are remnants of a pre-Christian fertility or mother goddess religion.[3] They note what they claim are differences of materials and styles of some sheela na gigs from their surrounding structures, and noting that a few are turned on their side (like the dancing figure which used to be on Kiltinane church, county Tipperary), to support the idea that they were incorporated from previous structures into early Christian buildings.

In addition, typical continental exhibitionist figures differ from those of (largely post-Romanesque) Irish sheela na gigs. There iare few male figures in Ireland, whereas they are not at all rare in Britain, and outnumber males in France. In France both male and female figures are also acrobatic (mostly feet-to-ears), and the two earliest Irish figures (at Clonmacnoise and Aghalurcher) are of this type. The Church condemned all entertainment (such as acrobats, tumblers, performing animals and folk-music) that was not its own or commissioned by it. Thus corbel-tables on Romanesque churches often feature musicians, tumblers, bears as well as drunkards, gluttons - and people in 'obscene' postures, some of the male ones even tonsured.

Etymology

The name was first published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 1840-1844, as a local name for a carving once present on a church gable wall in Rochestown, County Tipperary, Ireland; the name also was recorded in 1840 by John O'Donovan, an official of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, referring to a dancing figure on Kiltinane Castle, County Tipperary.[1] Scholars disagree about the origin and meaning of the name in Ireland, as it is not directly translatable into Irish. Alternative spellings of "Sheela" may sometimes be encountered; they include Sheila, Síle and Síla.[3][1][5] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is derived from Irish, Síle na gcíoch, meaning "Julia of the breasts"[6] - a ridiculous derivation.

The name "Seán-na-Gig" was even more ludicrously invented by Jack Roberts for the ithyphallic male counterpart of the Sheela. While rare in Ireland, male exhibitionists are frequent on the continent.[2]

Jørgen Andersen writes that the name is an Irish phrase, originally either Sighle na gCíoch, meaning "the old hag of the breasts", or Síle ina Giob, meaning "Sheila (from the Irish Síle, the Irish form of the Anglo-Norman name Cecile or Cecilia) on her hunkers".[1] Patrick S. Dinneen also gives Síle na gCíoch, stating it is "a stone fetish representing a woman, supposed to give fertility, [generally] thought to have been introduced by the Normans."[7] Other researchers have questioned these interpretations[2] “ few sheela na gigs are shown with breasts “ and expressed doubt about the linguistic connection between ina Giob and na Gig. The phrase "sheela na gig" was said to be a term for a hag or old woman.[5]

Barbara Freitag devotes a chapter to the etymology of the name in her book Sheela-Na-Gigs: Unravelling an Enigma. She documents references earlier than 1840, including a Royal Navy ship Sheela Na Gig, and an 18th-century dance called the Sheela na gig. The Irish slip jig, first published as "The Irish Pot Stick" (c.1758), appears as "Shilling a Gig" in Brysson's A Curious Collection of Favourite Tunes (1791) and "Sheela na Gigg" in Hime's 48 Original Irish Dances (c.1795).[8] These are the oldest recorded references to the name,[5] but do not apply to the architectural figures. The Royal Navy's records indicate the name of the ship refers to an "Irish female sprite".[5] Freitag discovered that "gig" was a Northern English slang word for a woman's genitals.[9] A similar word in modern Irish slang gigh also exists, further confusing the possible origin of the name.

[If the term is pronounced 'sheela-na-jig', the origin seems more easy to apprehend. Instead of indulging in acrobatics, many post-Romanesque figures are depicted as dancing, sometimes with a hand raised as in a jig. This was a northern English dance considered lewd at the time (like the volta or jumping-dance later). It was imported into Scotland as the Scottish Jig, écossaise, Schottishe, and to Ireland as the Irish Jig – the most lewd of its forms. The rhythm remained popular, and the more seemly gigue (soft French g) was a musical form employed by Byrd, Bull, Purcell, Marais, etc.

See the page on the lost Kiltinane Church figure.

Jig as a verb had strong sexual connotations, as did Jazz/Jizz much later. Compare the related verb to jag which means to enter sharply. Consider also the verb to jog. Compare also the old word giglot (lewd and wanton woman) and the contemporary gigolo (a kind of male prostitute). The term 'jiggery-pokery' was applied to rapid or desperate sexual liaisons. 'Jig-a-jig' is a term which survives to this day in West Africa, from the sailors in days of yore and today; and 'to jiggle' was Victorian slang for 'to fuck'. Thus the post-Romanesque figures carry on the Romanesque condemnation music, dance and entertainment thought (by the English) to be particularly riotous in Ireland.]

Weir and Jerman use the name sheela for the figure because it had entered popular usage; they also term figures of both sexes "exhibitionist".[2] They cite Andersen's second chapter as a good discussion of the name.[1] Andersen says there is no evidence that "sheela na gig" was ever a popular name for the figures when they were created. It began during the mid-19th century "where popular understanding of the characteristics of a sheela were vague and people were wary of its apparent rudeness". An earlier reference to the dubious nature of the name is made by H. C. Lawlor in an article in Man Vol. 31, January 1931 (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland), in which he writes, "The term 'sheela-na-gig' has no etymological meaning and is an absurd name." Andersen, Weir and Jerman, and Freitag all dismiss the name as being modern and somewhat arbitrary.[1][2][5]

The oldest recorded name for one of the figures is "The Idol", which relates to the figure at Holy Cross Church in Binstead on the Isle of Wight. This name was mentioned by R. Worsley in his The History of the Isle of Wight (1781) and noted also by J. Albin in A New, Correct, and Much-improved History of the Isle of Wight (1795) (Andersen page 11). The name "The Idol" also was applied to a now lost figure in Lusk, Ireland and was recorded as being in use around 1783.[1]

Hypotheses

Much of the disagreement among scholars about these figures concerns exactly what they are meant to represent, and no theory explains all the figures.

Survival of a pagan goddess

A popular hypothesis is that sheela na gigs represent a pagan goddess, but academics believe the situation was more complex, with multiple interpretations and roles for the female character as spiritual traditions changed over time.[1][2][5] The goddess in question usually is identified as Celtic, the hag-like Cailleach figure of Irish and Scottish mythology. Margaret Murray proposed this, as did Anne Ross, who wrote in her essay "The Divine Hag of the Pagan Celts", "I would like to suggest that in their earliest iconographic form they do in fact portray the territorial or war-goddess in her hag-like aspect". Georgia Rhoades suggests that the figures may represent the crone or an earth goddess from Celtic mythology.[9]

Mircea Eliade's The Encyclopedia of Religion (1993) draws parallels between the sheela na gig and the ancient Irish myth of the goddess who granted kingship. She would appear as a lustful hag, and most men would refuse her advances, except for one man who accepted. When he had relations with her, she was transformed into a beautiful maiden who would confer royalty onto him and bless his reign. There are additional variants of this common Northern European motif (see "Loathly lady").[10] Andersen devotes a chapter to this theory, entitled "Pagan or Medieval". While suggesting possible pagan influences on Irish sheela na gigs, he considers them as having a medieval context.[1] He argues that pagan origins are less likely than influence from the continent during the medieval period: "What can be said against it, is that it is less easily proved and can be less easily illustrated than the possible continental, French origin for the motif discussed in earlier chapters" (The Witch on the Wall, p. 95).

Weir and Jerman explore the possible influence of the ancient Greek Baubo figurine on the motif, but they acknowledge that the link is tenuous. They write, "It makes for very interesting speculation, but the amount of evidence is not large".[2] There is a similar tenuous link with male exhibitionist figures in Hindu contexts, notably at Candi Sukuh in Java.[citation needed]

Freitag explores possible Celtic pagan origins, but finds little to suggest a link; "in particular the notion of the divine hag being a portrayal of the Ur-Sheela has to be firmly dismissed as wayward conjecture" (Sheela na gigs: Unravelling an Enigma, page 41). Although scholars have used convincing evidence to reject the theory, it is popularly held and propagated by self-confessed Neo-Pagans.

Distribution

A preponderant number of the figures are found in Romanesque contexts,[2] especially in France, northern Spain and Britain, with outliers in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Corsica and Liguria. In Ireland figures commonly are found in areas of Norman influence.[4]