She is a sheela-na-gig, a category of medieval stone carving found on churches and castles across Ireland and Britain, typically depicting a female figure in a squatting pose, displaying her genitalia in an exaggerated fashion. Their precise purpose remains debated: apotropaic warning, fertility symbol, or something else entirely. Whatever the broader interpretation, the Ballynahinch figure has acquired a more local and rather pointed explanation.

The carving is set into a rectangular slab measuring 0.55 metres high and executed in raised relief. Freitag, writing in 2004, described the figure in some detail: a large round head, eyes wide open, strong billowy lines across the forehead, and prominent jug ears. The body is lean, with no breasts indicated and the ribs showing. Her arms are held akimbo, hands meeting above the pudenda, which is carved as a deep round hole. She squats with knees bent, heels touching, and toes turned outward. It is an unusually precise surviving example of the type. As for how she came to be there, a tradition recorded by White in 1892 offers a memorably specific answer: the figure is said to be a caricature of the castle's cook, carved in revenge by the tradesmen she had treated with discourtesy during the building of the tower house. Whether the story is true is impossible to say, but it has the texture of something passed down with some relish over the generations. It transforms what might otherwise be read as a generic apotropaic emblem into something more like a grudge immortalised in stone, placed conspicuously above the entrance for all to see.