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Sheela Na Gigs (or '''Sheela-na-Gigs''') are figurative carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated Vulva . They are found on Churches , Castles and other buildings in Ireland and Britain , sometimes together with male figures. A well-known example can be seen at Kilpeck in Herefordshire , England. According to the BBC website {Link without Title} ''"...Most Sheela na Gigs are found in Ireland, set into the walls of churches (or occasionally castles)."'' In ''The Sheela-na-Gigs of Ireland and Britain: The Divine Hag of the Christian Celts – An Illustrated Guide'' Joanne McMahon and Jack Roberts cite 101 examples in Ireland against 45 in the rest of Britain. There is controversy regarding the source of the figures. One perspective, by James Jerman and Anthony Weir, is that the sheelas were first carved in by Mediæval standards, suggests that they were used to represent female Lust as hideous and Sinfully corrupting. Another theory, espoused by Joanne McMahon and Jack Roberts, is that the carvings are remnants of a pre-Christian fertility or Mother Goddess religion. To support this claim, they point to the differences in materials and styles of the sheelas from their surrounding structures, and that some sheelas are turned on their side, to support the idea that they were incorporated from previous structures into early-Christian structures. There are differences between typical "continental" exhibitionist figures and Irish sheelas, including the scarcity of male figures in Ireland and the UK, while the continental carvings are more likely to involve male figures, and the more "contortionist" postures of continental figures. Such carvings are said to ward off Death and Evil (Andersen, Weir, and Jerman). Other grotesques such as Gargoyle s and Hunky Punk s are frequently found on churches all over Europe and it is commonly said that they are there to keep Evil Spirits away (see Apotropaic Magic ). They are often positioned over doors or windows, presumably to protect these openings. THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME SHEELA NA GIG The name was first published in the ''Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy'' 1840-44, as a local name for a carving once present on a church gable wall in Rochestown, County Tipperary, Ireland; the name was also recorded in 1840 by John O'Donovan, an official of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, referring to a figure on a church in Kiltinane, County Tipperary. There is controversy regarding the origin and meaning of the name, as the name is not directly translatable into Irish . Alternative spellings of "Sheela" may sometimes be encountered; they include Sheila and '''Síle''' The name "Seán-na-Gig" was coined by Jack Roberts for the ithyphallic male counterpart of the Sheela which is fairly rare in Ireland but is much more common on the continent. Eamonn Kelly 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 (a name for an old woman) on her hunkers". Barbara Freitag devotes a whole chapter to the and a dance called the Sheela na gig from the 1700's. She also discovered that "gig" was a Northern English slang word for a woman's genitals, further confusing the possible origin of the name. Weir and Jerman use the name sheela, but only as it had entered popular usage; they also call figures of both sexes "exhibitionist". They cite Andersen's second chapter in ''The Witch on the Wall'' as a good discussion of the name. Andersen states in that chapter that there is no evidence that sheela na gig was ever a popular name for the figures and that it came out of a period (i.e. the mid 1800s) "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 HC Lawlor in Man Vol.31, Jan 1931 (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland) where he says "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. The oldest recorded name for one of the figures is "The Idol" which relates to the Binstead figure on the Isle of Wight. This name was mentioned in 1781 in "The History of the Isle of Wight" by R. Worsley and mentioned again in 1795 by J. Albin in "A New, Correct and Much-improved History of the Isle of Wight" (Andersen page 11). REFERENCES
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