See Below, this excellent beginning article on Celtic figural objects. Also, see Nora Chadwick's book, The Celts, and Jean Markale, The Celts. Antoni Fraser's The Warrior Queens is fantastic, as is Joy Chant's, The Warrior King's. Fraser also writes books about dolls.
CELTIC WOODEN FIGURINES
from
(a) Shercock (Cavan) Ireland
(b) Dagenham (Essex) England [45 cms high]
(c) Ballachulish (Argyll) Scotland
(d) Teigngrace (Devon) England
(e) Montbouy (Loiret) France
All these figures are stiffly upright with none of the lewdness of the sheela-na-gigs and none of the earthy and often witty plasticity of the Romanesque carvings.
It was originally thought that the holes in the Shercock and Dagenham figures might have been sockets for penises or even dildoes, but this has by no means been established. Hundreds of wooden figures (including representations of animals and internal organs) have been found in France, notably at the source of the river Seine.
drawings by Dr Morna Simpson
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