A two-faced stone - the Boa Island figure

"Then I found a two faced stone
On burial ground,
God-eyed, sex-mouthed, its brain
A watery wound."

— 'January God', by Seamus Heaney.

In an apparently ancient cemetery on an island in Lower Lough Erne, county Fermanagh is a historical curiosity. The two-sided Boa Island figure is an enigma, even whether it is pagan Iron Age or early Christian (Caldragh cemetery has been dated to 400-800 AD). It's not really a Janus figure either but two separate figures standing back to back. Is one side male and one side female, as many think?

Writing in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy in 1933, the Lady Dorothy Lowry-Corry described and published photographs of the carved stone, which she believed represented male effigies on both sides. In that she disagreed with George Du Noyer who had first officially recorded the figure in a sketch in 1841 (not very accurately, she said). In her photos, the stone is very noticeably askew and partially sunk in the ground.

She also described and photographed the smaller companion stone, known as the Lustymore figure. Lowry-Corry explained that it was usually preserved in the house on Lustymore island leased by Lady Ernestine Hunt. But she had temporarily removed it to Lustybeg Island, where she was residing. Originally it had once stood in a (disused) Christian cemetery on Lustymore, traditionally said to have been attached to a monastery. Now of course the Lustymore figure is also standing in Caldragh cemetery on Boa Island. It appears that over the years the figures and stones surrounding them have been moved many times and arranged for display.

White Island in the lough also has its stone figures, these more definitely Christian, early medieval and linked to another monastic site.

The stone figures also appear to be cleaned occasionally, judging by their condition in this website's photos. My images below were taken at Caldragh cemetery in 2015, with both covered in moss and lichen. Left in foreground, the figure from Lustymore Island. Behind it is the taller two-sided figure.

Boa Island carved figures

The Lustymore figure is speculated by some to be a female Sheela-na-Gig precursor. This was misleading, Lowry-Corry confidently asserted.

A 2003 article in Archaeology Ireland by Richard B Warner shows a digital representation of how the Boa Island figure would look if reunited with its correct bottom half, seen positioned alongside it in the photo above but which appears to have since moved slightly judging by more recent images.

Like another mysterious stone figure, the Tandragee Idol, we can only guess as to who made these figures and why. What or who do they represent? Is their location on an island significant? Boa Island now is reachable by road but once it was only accessible by boat. Lough Erne was also once larger before land drainage schemes. The isolation, the misty waters, the liminal space...

Are there others waiting to be found? And why are they not preserved in a museum instead of silently gathering moss and lichen (and coins from tourists). There were plans for this once, rejected. 

See also

Watch Seamus Heaney "look the old god in the face" in a 1972 BBC Northern Ireland programme, Ulster in Focus.

See more of my Boa Island figure images in the YouTube Short embedded above.

Comments

  1. HistoryShorts28 July 2025 at 20:31

    In 1970 a plan to move the Boa Island and White Island statues to Enniskillen Museum "was blocked by local enthusiasts" according to an article in the News Letter.

    ReplyDelete

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