Worship of the Generative Powers: Shelah-na-Gigs

24 is preserved in the museum at Dublin, but we are not informed from whence it was obtained. The next, 25 which is also now preserved in the Dublin Museum, was taken from the old church on the White Island, in Lough Erne, county Fermanagh. This church is supposed by the Irish antiquaries to be a structure of very great antiquity, for some of them would carry its date as far back as the seventh century, but this is probably an exaggeration. The one which follows  26 was furnished by an old church pulled down by order of the ecclesiastical commissioners, and it was presented to the museum at Dublin, by the late Dean Dawson. Our last example 27 was formerly in the possession of Sir Benjamin Chapman, Bart., of Killoa Castle, Westmeath, and is now in a private collection in London. It was found in 1859 at Chloran, in a field on Sir Benjamin's estate known by the name of the "Old Town," from whence stones had been removed at previous periods, though there are now very small remains of building. This stone was found at a depth of about five feet from the surface, which shows that the building, a church no doubt,

28 May not these columns have been intended, if we knew the truth, as protections for the people of the district in which they stood, and placed in the position where they could most conveniently been seen? This superstitious sentiment may also offer the true explanation of an incident which is

29 The prevailing belief in the beneficial influence of this sight, rather than a mere pleasantry, seems to afford the best explanation of this story.

This superstition which, as shown by the Shelah-na-Gigs of the Irish churches, prevailed largely in the middle ages, explains another class of antiquities which are not uncommon. These are small figures of nude females exposing themselves in exactly the same

30 One of these images, which D'Hancarville considers to be the Venus of the Vandal mythology, represents a female in a reclining position, with the wings and claws of a bird, holding to view a pomegranate, open, which, as D'Hancarville remarks, was considered as a sign representing the female sexual organ. In fact, it was a form and idea more unequivocally represented in the Roman figures which we have already described, 31 but which continued through the middle ages, and was preserved in a popular name for that organ, abricot, or expressed more energetically, abricot fendu, used by Rabelais, and we believe still preserved in France. This curious image is represented, after D'Hancarville, in three different points of view, in our plate. 32 Several figures of a similar description, but representing the subject in a more matter-of-fact shape, were brought from Egypt by a Frenchman who held an official situation in that country, and three of them are now in a private collection in London. We have engraved one of these small bronzes, 33 which, as will be seen, presents in exact counterpart of the Shelah-na-Gig.

34 made of lead, and apparently mediæval, was found at Avignon, and is preserved in the same private collection just alluded to; and a third, 35 was dug up, about ten years ago, at Kingston-on-Thames. The form of these statuettes seems to show that they were intended as portable images, for the same purpose as the Shelahs, which people might have ready at hand to look upon for protection whenever they were under fear of the influence of the evil eye, or of any other sort of enchantment.

We have not as yet any clear evidence of the existence of the Shelah-na-Gig in churches out of Ireland. We have been informed that an example has been found in one of the little churches on the coast of Devon; and there are curious sculptures, which appear to be of the same character, among the architectural ornamentation of the very early church of San Fedele at Como in Italy. Three of these are engraved in our plate VIII. On the top of the right hand jamb of the door  36 is a naked male figure, and in the same position on the other side a female, 37

38 merely as "the figure of a woman holding her legs apart." We understand that the surface of the stone in these sculptures is so much worn that it is quite uncertain whether the sexual parts were ever distinctly marked, but from the postures and positions of the hands, and the situation in which these figures are placed, they seem to resemble closely, except in their superior style of art, the Shelah-na-Gigs of Ireland. There can be little doubt that the superstition to which these objects belonged gave rise to much of the indecent sculpture which is so often found upon mediæval ecclesiastical buildings. The late Baron von Hammer-Pürgstall published a very learned paper upon monuments of various kinds which he considered as illustrating the secret history of the order of the Templars, from which we learn that there was in his time a series of most extraordinary obscene sculptures in the church of Schoengraber in Austria, of which he intended to give engravings, but the drawings had not arrived in time for his book; 39 but he has engraved the capital of a column in the church of

40 in which the two sexes are displaying to view the members, which were believed to be so efficatious against the power of fascination.

The figure of the female organ, as well as the male, appears to have been employed during the middle ages of Western Europe far more generally than we might suppose, placed upon buildings as a talisman against evil influences, and especially against witchcraft and the evil eye, and it was used for this purpose in many other parts of the world. It was the universal practice among the Arabs of Northern Africa to stick up over the door of the house or tent, or put up nailed on a board in some other way, the generative organ of a cow, mare, or female camel, as a talisman to avert the influence of the evil eye. It is evident that the figure of this member was far more liable to degradation in form than that of the male, because it was much less easy, in the hands of rude draughtsmen, to delineate in an intelligible form, and hence it soon assumed shapes which though intended to represent it, we might rather call symbolical of it, though no symbolism was intended. Thus the figure of the female organ easily assumed the rude form of a horseshoe, and as the original

Footnotes

36:21 Plate V, Fig. 1.

36:22 Plate V, Fig. 2.

36:23 Plate V, Fig. 3.

37:24 Plate V, Fig. 4.

37:25 Plate VI, Fig. 1.

37:26 Plate VI,, Fig. 2.

37:27 Plate VI,, Fig. 3.

38:28 Herodotus, Euterpe, cap. 102. Diodorus Siculus adds to the account given by Herodotus, that Sesostris also erected columns bearing the male generative organ as a compliment to the peoples who had defended themselves bravely.

41:29 This story is told by the two Christian Fathers, Arnobius, Adversus Gentes, lib. v. c. 5, and Clemens Alexandrinus Protrepticus, p. 17, ed. Oxon. 1715. The latter writer merely states that Baubo exposed her parts to the view of the goddess, without the incident of preparation mentioned by Arnobius.

43:30 D'Hancarville, Antiquities Etrusques, Grecques, et Romaines, Paris, 1785, tom. v. p. 61.

43:31 See our Plates II, Fig. 4, VII, and Plate XII, Fig. 3.

43:32 Plate VII, Figs. 1, 2, 3.

43:33 Plate VII, Fig. 4.

44:34 Plate VII, Fig. 5.

44:35 Plate XII, Fig. 4.

44:36 Plate VIII, Fig. 1.

44:37 Plate VIII, Fig. 2.

47:38 Plate VIII, Fig. 3.

47:39 See Von Hammer-Pürgstall, Fundgruben des Orients, vol. vi, p. 26.

48:40 Von Hammer-Pürgstall, Fundgruben des Orients, vol. vi, p. 35, and Plate iv, Fig. 31--See our Plate VII, Fig. 6.