I first came across these strange and often crude figures
in 1973,
while following E.E. Evans' pioneering Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland
- A Guide (1966).
For forty years I researched them in the field, in the bowels
of the National Museum of Ireland
(where they were hidden out of Christian sight)
in museums at Drogheda and Athlone, in storehouses in Cardiff and Limerick,
on Irish castles and, most importantly,
on churches in England, France, Spain, Italy and Portugal.
This website has been richly expanded from my doctoral thesis.
I
am grateful to Julianna
Lees (www.green-man-of-cercles.org),
Tina
Negus
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/84265607@N00/sets/72157600159376057/),
John Harding
(www.sheelanagig.org),
Sean
Breadin, photographer
Joël
Jalladeau and
Jacques Martin
(http://jalladeauj.fr/obscenite/index.html),
and others
for several important photos on these pages.
'Prudery
is the worst form of Avarice'
Stendhal
'La pruderie est une espèce d'avarice, la pire de toutes'
Detail of a 12,000-year-old pillar, Göbekli Tepe, SE Anatolia.
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- Antonio Dominguez Leiva, Reader in comparative literature at the University of Burgundy, Dijon. sheela-na-gigs |
Des
sculptures sexuellement explicites se trouvent sur un certain nombre d'églises
médiévales en France et en Espagne.
Cette étude examine les origines et les objectifs de ces sculptures,
les considérant non pas comme des symboles magiques de fertilité,
ni même comme des idoles d'anciennes religions préchrétiennes,
mais comme des œuvres sérieuses qui traitent du comportement et du
salut des populations médiévales,
et qui appuient ainsi les enseignements moraux de l'Église.
LATEST DISCOVERY A crude late 19th century 'exhibitionist' female made out of a simple outline groove and 2 cup-marks on a rock outcrop of greywacke in county Louth (a short distance from a former railway line to Enniskillen), along with other 'sketches' including a steam engine, a ship, anchors, a mermaid, a cart, a wheel, a man pissing, a date (1888)...probably made at different times. Maybe worth comparing with Royston Cave ? see detail here from |
updated September 2024