It is a sheela-na-gig, one of those peculiarly medieval carvings of a female figure explicitly displaying an exaggerated vulva, found across Ireland and Britain on church walls, castles, and now, sometimes, in library collections. This particular example travelled some distance, in more ways than one, before arriving where it now rests.

The figure came to light in 1989 during a graveyard clean-up scheme at Clonoulty Churchquarter, at the eastern end of a burial ground that had stood beside a medieval church already mapped on the first Ordnance Survey six-inch sheets of 1840. The carving is on an irregular slab measuring 0.71 metres high and 0.35 metres wide, with a thickness of 0.24 metres; the back and sides are only very roughly dressed, suggesting it was always meant to be seen from the front and set into or against a wall. The figure itself is described in detail by the scholar Barbara Freitag in her 2004 study of sheela-na-gigs: the head is so heavily damaged that no facial features remain, though traces of a necklace survive at the base of the neck, and the ribs are clearly cut. The pose is the characteristic squatting form, legs widely splayed and bent at the knees, feet turned outward. The left arm passes behind the left leg, with fingers visible emerging from beneath the thigh; the right arm reaches down to grip the vulva at the front of the body. The purpose of such figures remains genuinely debated, with explanations ranging from fertility symbols to apotropaic devices intended to ward off evil, and their presence on ecclesiastical buildings continues to resist any single tidy interpretation.

The Bolton Library in Cashel, where the carving is now kept, holds one of the oldest and most substantial collections of early printed books in Ireland, so the sheela-na-gig finds itself in unusual company. Anyone visiting Cashel who looks beyond the Rock may find it worth enquiring about access to the library and its collections.