Somewhere in Cambridge, among the holdings of a university collection, there may sit a carved stone that once belonged to a castle in County Kildare. A sheela-na-gig is a carved female figure, typically shown in an explicit, confrontational pose, found on medieval churches and castles across Ireland and Britain. Their precise meaning remains debated, though they are generally understood as apotropaic, intended to ward off evil or danger. This particular example, if that is indeed what it is, was recorded under the rather telling name of an "evil eye stone", which places it squarely in the folk tradition of objects thought to deflect malevolent forces.

The stone is associated with Carrick Castle in County Kildare and was noted by O'Leary, writing between 1899 and 1902, as part of the Murray Collection. That collection was subsequently transferred to Cambridge University, taking the stone far from the site where it was presumably once displayed or built into the fabric of the castle. O'Leary's own uncertainty is worth noting; the attribution is listed as a possible sheela-na-gig rather than a confirmed one, meaning the identification rests on that single nineteenth-century description. It is a reminder of how many such carvings were removed, dispersed, or absorbed into private and institutional collections during the Victorian period, often recorded only in passing and with limited detail.