The Witch On The Wall by Jorgen Andersen

Sheela-na-gigs is readable and interesting for the fun of following someone working out an intellectual puzzle. “Customary folk practices, wake amusements in particular, were curbed, marriage and sexual behavior were restrained and public order was controlled.” In Ireland particularly, she notes that they cease being carved and are even removed from churches during the reformation of manners (led by the now-legitimate Catholic clergy) that begins at the close of the 18th century and continues through the 19th. Patrick, not to mention one of the names used as personifying the nation of Ireland itself.įreitag is reluctant to endorse the sweeping Margaret Murray-style “ancient Pagan goddess” interpretation of the statues, but she does conclude that it is possible “to place the Sheela-na-gig in the realm of folk deities in charge of birth.” Not exclusively Irish, the statues have also been recorded in Scotland, England, and Wales.Īnd in 18th and early 19th-century Irish folklore, Sheila was the wife of St.

The British West Indies fleet during the time of the American Revolution included a small ship called Shelanagig. (The third gives us “whirlygig” as well as “jig,” the dance, plus “gigolo,” a paid dancing partner.) It has variously been defined in dictionaries of slang as meaning the female genitals, a “wanton” girl or prostitute, or anything that whirls around. Though “Sheela” or “Sheila” is an Irish form of “Cecilia,” (a name brought by the Normans), “gig” is a puzzle. Sheela-na-Gigs by Barbara Freitag, (Routledge, 2004) caught my eye at the AAR-SBL bookshow because it promised a thorough, cross-disciplinary methology, if not the answer to the origin of the puzzling carvings on old Irish and English churches.Īuthor Barbara Freitag, who teaches at Dublin City University, crisscrosses through archaeology, literature, medieval history, and even a little military history while seeking the origin of these crude carving that usually show either a woman spreading her vagina or else squatting to give birth.Įven the etymology is tricky.

The Witch On The Wall by Jorgen Andersen