Cork in 50 Artworks, No 9: Sheela-na-gig carvings at Cork Public Museum 

 One, a large stone slab with a figure carved on it, was found in the garden of a deserted house near Ringaskiddy in the mid-1980s; the other was found among the ruins of Tracton Abbey in the 1940s. They can roughly be dated to between the 13th and 16th centuries.

The late Stella Cherry, former curator of the Cork Public Museum, was an expert on sheela-na-gigs, and in an article for the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society in 1993, she wrote about how the name sheela-na-gig was first recorded in John O’Donovan’s Ordnance Survey Letters for Co Tipperary of 1840, when he described the figure at Kiltinane near Fethard, Co Tipperary.

 However, the origin of the name still remains a mystery, with Cherry writing that one suggested plausible meaning was that the name came from the Irish Síle ina Giob, meaning Sheela on her hunkers.

The current curator of Cork Public Museum, Dan Breen, says for many years, the pair of sheelas were tucked away under the stairs but are now displayed in a more prominent location as part of the museum’s new medieval Cork exhibition. He says while he is not aware of any issues displaying them in recent decades, the nature of the objects does not pose any problem now.

“I think modern museum audiences are well able to handle depictions of female genitalia. In terms of displaying them, they are very heavy, so they required a special case and there was a lot involved just to mount them. We would have had a lot of interest in them over the years.

 "I remember having to bring visitors into the back area to show them the Sheelas na Gigs under the stairs; on one occasion, a professor of vaginal studies from a German university came in to see them. They are the type of objects that on the one hand, attract serious researchers and archaeologists and then you have the culturally curious, people who are fascinated by what they mean,” says Breen.

As Cherry wrote, the precise function of sheela-na-gigs is unclear, with the most com­mon theories being that they had fertility associations and may represent the earth-mother or goddess, that they were used to warn an illiterate faithful against the sin of lust, and that they were used to ward off evil.

In her 2004 book, Sheela-na-Gigs: Unravelling an Enigma, academic Barbara Freitag highlighted inconsistencies in the various interpretations with regard to the origin, function and name of sheela-na-gigs, and suggested they were folk deities with particular responsibility for assistance in childbirth. This view is echoed by Cork folklorist and lecturer Shane Lehane.

“The sheela would definitely be seen within the context of what we call the sovereignty deity, who represents the earth and nature in so many different ways and the cycle of fertility that goes with that,” he says.

“When women were pregnant in the past, their mortality risk and that of the baby were hugely increased. Many women feared birth as a potential of their own death, so they did everything they possibly could to make sure they got through pregnancy. 

"That often meant going to a particular location like a holy well and going through a variety of different rituals. All of those holy wells had an association with women and birthing, women took the waters to ease menstrual pain, to aid fertility, to ensure a healthy birth…and touching the sheelas was part of that as well. 

"Freitag’s idea was that the sheelas operated like iconic midwifes, statues of women who were thought to be lucky and to give strength,” says Lehane.

According to Breen, they allow museum visitors to make up their own minds about what the figures mean.

“We encourage people to draw their own conclusions, although you would be be safe in the assumption that they are related to fertility and the female body. They are wonderful to have. Every now and then, I look at them and wonder, ‘who created these?’. The fact that we can’t fully explain them will always make them intriguing.”

 Lehane says the crudeness of the depictions makes sheelas more appealing as pieces of art.

“The sheelas by their very nature are naive, and I like that. This is not something that is high art, it is a popular, vernacular art form. It is primal, it is not going to be admired for its expertise and skill level.” He sees the increased interest in sheela-na-gigs and their appropriation as totems of female power as part of an ongoing cycle.

“I reckon that sheelas have been reimagined right up through time, probably from the sovereignty deity concept into icons of fertility and birth — in the same way as Bridget had a pre-Christian identity, then a Christian identity and on top of that a folk identity. 

"As we come out of the oppressive patriarchal church, women want to refocus the female cosmic energy, their sense of who they are and how they see themselves. People want sheela plaques, brooches and images. It is meeting a need, and it is great to think that people are looking for an icon and a representation.”