This story was published in Venturing in Ireland: Quest for the Modern Celtic Soul (Travelers’ Tales, 2007). It won an honorable mention in the Bay Area Travel Writers Best 2010 travel writing contest.
Sheela-na-gig’s invitation is fraught with danger. Our relationship began with my quick peek at a wildly pornographic image in Thomas Cahill’s popular book, How the Irish Saved Civilization. An ancient goddess, Sheela is rendered symbolically, stripped of all but the essential features. She is naked, bald, and breastless, and reaches both arms behind her bent legs, using her hands to spread her genitals wide open—as wide as a barn door—in exuberant invitation. There was no question in my mind about the figure’s intended meaning. As soon as I saw her, I was transfixed.
Evolutionary biology is my calling; sex, transformation, and renewal are my religion. I was visiting Ireland for ten days, and knew I would have no peace until I found this wild and fearless female creatrix. But how would I locate the figures? My guidebook didn’t even mention them. Could I go around asking civilized folks on the streets of County Cork where to find an ancient erotic goddess?
“Do you have an image of Sheela-na-gig?” I began at the Tourist Center in Kinsale, a charming seaside village known for its fine crafts, world-class cuisine, and yachting activities. The buildings in Kinsale are well kept and brightly painted, and many are decorated with baskets spilling over with colorful pansies and petunias; they’re accustomed to tourists here. “I see you have reproductions of old Celtic carvings.”
Margaret, a slender young shopkeeper, regarded me curiously. “Gosh, I haven’t thought about Sheela-na-gig since I was a wee girl. She was a screaming woman, wasn’t she?” Margaret pantomimed holding her mouth wide open from both sides.
Hmmm. Right position, wrong orifice.
“When the monks came and brought Christianity, they didn’t like her. That’s all I really remember.”
Was Margaret just being polite, or did she really believe that Sheela-na-gig was a screaming woman? Perhaps that was the way her genteel mother had described the goddess to a young and innocent girl. (“Yes, Maggie darling, she was screaming, and the monks didn’t like her making all that racket. It was so unladylike.”)
A second shopkeeper, twenty years older, stood nearby, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, and tittering with quiet embarrassment. “And what about you?” I asked, “Have you heard of Sheela-na-gig?” Surely she knew about a goddess who had been worshipped throughout the British Isles for centuries.
“Oh, no” she sputtered hurriedly. “I’m English. I haven’t heard of her a’ tall!”
I asked around a bit more, buttonholing women in shops and on the street, but got nowhere. Either they had never heard of Sheela-na-gig, or they weren’t admitting to it.
Clearly, a new approach was in order.
I determined to ask Sister Eily, a retired nun I had just met. Sister Eily had grown up in Ireland, and ran off when she was only sixteen—with her father’s reluctant permission—to Australia to join the Order of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart. Here was another fearless woman. After many years of service, Sister Eily had retired and returned home to Ireland. She wore street clothes, sensible shoes, and a white, furry vest she’d bought for fifteen Euro in a thrift shop.
Indelicate though the question might be, I was certain Sister Eily would tell me the truth. After all, nuns—even retired ones—aren’t allowed to lie. They are also tough as tires; the sister didn’t even blink at my question, although the right side of her mouth did curl up in a small, sly smile. She replied with an Irish lilt, “Oh, very little is known about Sheela-na-gig.”
I waited.
“She’s the fertility goddess. A woman would go back into the church after giving birth to give thanks to Sheela-na-gig. She would go alone, or with a few female members of her clan, and go at a quiet time when no one else was there. My mother would have done this, with her mother and her sister. I always wondered, in my heart, why the father did not give thanks as well, since it was his child, too.”
Sister Eily mused that giving thanks to a fertility goddess “isn’t really part of the Christian tradition.” She thought it had most likely been a holdover from pagan tradition, explaining that “pagans, like the rest of us, worship God the best way we know how.”
I next inquired about Sheela at a pub, where a green-eyed waitress with tight jeans and an easy smile raised my hopes. “She’s a fertility goddess,” Irene said. “There are no fairy tales about Sheela-na-gig, and I’m not surprised that many people you’ve spoken with haven’t heard of her. The old ways are being forgotten, aren’t they? You’ll find a site in Ballyvourny, on N25 past Macroom. Go out to a rural area, and ask the old men; they’ll know.”
I was surprised at Irene’s suggestion that I ask a man about Sheela-na-gig, but the opportunity presented itself when I met Desmond O’Grady, one of Ireland’s greatest living poets. And I couldn’t resist.
Dr. O’Grady had not shaved that morning. His pale blue eyes were watery; his eloquent hands waxy. His hair was grey, wild and wiry. O’Grady wore a tattered red bandana around his neck; a wrinkled, sage green shirt; and crumpled, pale pink linen pants that looked as though they had been inadvertently washed with the red bandana. He had been, long ago, a secretary to Ezra Pound and a good friend of Samuel Beckett.
During lunch, O’Grady revealed an ambivalence toward the feminine, dispensing such wisdom as, “Women are only supposed to write checks,” and “Cairo is a slum, except for the sphinx and her inviting orifice.” His candor was promising; O’Grady was clearly no stranger to the earthier side of life. What did he think of Sheela-na-gig? I had to ask the question that was constantly on my mind, if not my lips.
O’Grady knew her, all right. He looked me straight in the eye and warned, “Stay away from Sheela-na-gig; she’s good for nothin’ but trouble! She’ll take you for everything you’ve got, and then she’ll come back for more.” Then he ordered salmon and chips and a Beamish, admonishing the waiter not to forget the chips.
“Have you ever actually met Sheela-na-gig?”
“Oh, yes!” the great poet whispered. “‘O’Grady,’ she said, ‘I’m tough, and I live on Tough Alley. The farther down you go, the tougher it gets, and I live at the last house…'”
Read the rest of this story in Travelers’ Tales Venturing in Ireland: Quest for the Modern Celtic Soul:
