[Ads-l] OT: Sheelanagige was Re: It was not permitted to pass.

[Jonathan Lighter]

Can anybody direct us to a photo of a Sheelanagig with the inappropriate
teeth?

I've seen lots of illustrations of Sheelas but never noticed any Freudian
dentition.


JL

On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 4:36 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 2:48 PM, Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com> wrote:
>
> > I don't get it: the Starbucks logo is a mermaid (or as later identified a
> > siren). A sheelanagig is a very different thing: a grotesque squatting
> > female form with a toothed vulva.
> >
>
> I agree. It's hard to see the Starbucks logo as having been derived from
> any of the versions of the sheelanagige.
>
> Uh, I've been holding back some of the info contained in the article in Via
> Domitia, a learned journal formerly published by the University of Toulouse
> 1954-1983, dealing with the history of the South of France. The design that
> the logo is derived from, is, in fact, according to the journal, neither a
> mermaid nor a siren, but a locker-room-level - from the contemporary point
> of view - visual pun representing the female genitalia. Nowadays, nobody
> has any idea why this design et sim. were used primarily as a decoration
> for the finials of the pews in churches. And the "mermaid" was only one of
> such now-obscene decorations used in churches. No one knows what there
> might have been in the churches de-Catholicized during the Reformation. In
> Amsterdam, not even the stained-glass windows of the formerly-Catholic
> churches, the Old Cathedral and the  New Cathedral, remain.
>
> IAC, the pre-sterilization version of the logo gave me a good laugh.
> Indeed, even the Legion of Decency version is good for a chuckle, when you
> know its origin.
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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