295 



Cavbeir J[ijuit on tlje Mall of ©abeg Cljiva^. 



With regard to the nature of the curious figure at Oaksey, on 

 which a note was printed in Wilts Arch. Mag., xxxiv., 156, the 

 Rev. W. Butt sends the following quotation from Forlong's Faiths 

 of Man, vol. iii., 302, in which all the known examples of such 

 figures in England are mentioned. — [Ed.] 



"Sila-na-gig. Sheela-na-gig. A Keltik lunar and phallic charm, still 

 found over doors and windows in our islands. It is a female figure, and 

 considered to avert the evil eye. There are said to be over three dozen such 

 in Ireland, and a few others in England, Wales, and Scotland : one of these 

 latter we have seen, in the old ruined Church in Harris (the outer Hebrides), 

 where are a sacred well and stone ; as in many other cases, such as the 

 Sheela Well at Corcomroe Abbey. The Sheela-na-gig is found on the " Sun 

 Stone " (clvain-Muidhr) at Tara and on an old English font. The example 

 at the base of the round tower of Cashel (Mr. Keaue, Toivers and Temples of 

 Ireland, p. 33) represents a female form with two twisted serpent legs. The 

 mermaid holding a book at Kyle— Clonfert, King's County — is a modified 

 STla-na-gig. An indecent example comes from the sill of a window in Ratho 

 Church, County Clare ; and a still more objectionable case was photographed, 

 in Wales, for the author in 1895. This was found, in the preceding autumn, 

 built into the base of the north wall of the old Parish Church of Llandrindod, 

 in Radnor. It was face downwards : and a medical man (according to the 

 Radnor Antiquary) stated that the colouring of the stone was due to blood. 

 The figure is 2 feet high and a foot across. The present Church dates only 

 from the seventeenth century. Another example is in the wall of Stretton 

 Church. There are two plaster casts in the British Museum of the same 

 figures. The Journal of the Irish Antiquarian Society (March, 1894) enu- 

 merated, before the discovery at Llandrindod, forty cases in Ireland, five in 

 England and Wales, and two in Scotland." 



