Burgesbeg (Tipperary)
Squatting figure with hands pulling enormous vulva, the right hand resting
upon the right thigh,
and the left hand passing under the left thigh.
This photo was taken in the crypt of the National Museum, Dublin, probably in the late 1960s.
from
the irishhistory.com
website :
"For much of the twentieth century it was classified as a sheela-na-gig,
the term used for the explicit female exhibitionist carvings found on medieval
Irish churches and castles,
often interpreted as protective or apotropaic figures.
Researcher Cherry reassessed it in 1992 and concluded it was instead a male
exhibitionist figure,
a distinction that matters both anatomically and in terms of how such carvings
are understood within medieval stonework.
The first figure was found in 1932 by a Mr Wallace inside the old church
at Burgesbeg, at the base of the wall of the only remaining gable.
By 1939, Guest recorded that Wallace
had also reported finding two figures lying outside the south wall of the
Burgesbeg churchyard.
The second figure is now held in a storeroom adjoining the cathedral at Clonmacnoise,
the great monastic site on the River Shannon in County Offaly,
while the first went on loan to the National Museum.
The Clonmacnoise figure has been described by McMahon and Roberts as having
bent legs,
bulbous eyes, and clearly defined ribs.
Weir offered a more precise anatomical reading, identifying a small protuberance
below what is likely the anus
and characterising it as a hesitant penis, a phrase that captures something
of the ambiguity that caused the original misidentification.
