Ballycloghduff (Westmeath)


Perhaps a Séamas-an-bhuid or Lusty Man ?

The strange Irish gate-pillar figure holding a key, which is
perhaps as much as five centuries later than the Romanesque exhibitionist carvings.

Compare this figure with...

click for a detail


...another remarkable key-bearer at Broadford, county Clare, sawn off at the waist...

and so possibly exhibitionist also before it was mutilated.

Compare both figures with a key-carrying figure on a Mithraic altar from SW France.


Compare the Ballycloghduff Lusty Man with the male on the Romanesque doorway at Saint-Front-sur-Nizonne in France.


click for another remarkable post-Romanesque phallic Irish carving
>


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