Tandragee Idol

The modern provenance of the statute is uncertain. It may have been found in a peat bog near Tandragee, County Armagh, sometime before 1912.[5] It was in a rockery at the rectory in Ballymore, County Armagh until 1932, "with some other unspecified sculptural fragments said to have come from Armagh".[6][7] It was first described in 1934 by the American archaeologist and art historian Arthur Kingsley Porter. He had viewed the idol in 1932 when it was in the possession of the widow of John McEndoo (d. 1922), rector of the Anglican church of St Mark, Ballymore, in Tandragee, who "had no clear impression of how the idol came into her husband's possession".[7]

Following the death of McEndoo's widow in 1935, the statue was donated to the Ulster Museum in 1935 by the rector, Canon Percy Marks.[7]

Detail of the face and helmet

The Tandragee Idol is carved in the round from a single block of local fine-grained granite. The torso is positioned on a wide rectangular granite block.[5][8]

The statue shows a brutish-looking figure, whose portrayal is described by the archeologist Etienn Rynne as "magnificent in its crude barbarism", and as "barbaric and menacing" by the archeologist Michael J. O'Kelly.[9][10] The figure has a squat (short and wide) physique, and a head that is disproportionately large compared to his body.[10] Although identifiable as male, his torso is rather sexless, and seems to lack a neck. He wears a horned helmet, with two knobs at either side representing protruding horns.[11]

His facial features are grotesque,[5] in particular he has a wide and open mouth that gapes in a vulgar manner reminiscent of the Early Medieval Sheela na gig style. His nose is wide and flat and his nostrils are pierced. His closely set oval eyes are positioned between large drooping lids and a primitive heavily ridged brow. Each hand consists of four crudely drawn and oversized fingers that lack knuckles or thumbs.[5][9]

His right arm reaches downwards diagonally, seemingly to hold his left arm.[10]

The majority of surviving prehistoric Irish stone sculptures in the iconic (representational) format originate from Ulster]. The group consists of a human figure in relief, three works showing animals and several works showing individual heads or busts that fall within the wider grouping of Celtic stone heads. The majority of Irish stone heads are thought to have been produced within a 500-year period ending in the early half of the first century AD,[12] with the Tandragee Idol as a very early example.[12]

Ancient stone artifacts are extremely difficult to date, complicated by the fact that most were discovered on ruined church grounds, many of which were in turn built on much older pagan ritual sites. Given these difficulties, archeologists often rely on art-historical methods of dating, such as tracing their methodological or iconographical origins.[12]

• 
  The Ralaghan idol, carved wood, c. 1096-906 BC[13]
• 
  The Corleck Head, c. 100–300 AD[14]
• 
  The double-headed Boa Island Stone Idol, c. 400–800 AD

Like the later Corleck Head, the Tandragee Idol may have produced for a small shrine or cult worship site.[11] It has also been compared to a c. 400–800 AD double-headed stone figure in the early-Medieval cemetery on Boa Island, County Fermanagh, which also has a seemingly detached arm, leading to speculation that both represent Nuadha.

Most archeologists associate the figure with Nuadha of the Silver Arm, the mythical chieftain of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who according to the Annals of the Four Masters lived between 1890–1870 BC. According to folklore, Nuadha lost an arm in battle, a mutilation that threatened his position as a leader, given it made him "not whole of body". By legend the healer Dian Cecht made a silver false-arm for him; hence the connection to the Tandragee figure, who seems to cling to a detached left arm.[5][15]

However the archeologist Patrick Gleeson warns against such interpretations and the tendency to view prehistoric Irish stone-deities through a pan-Celtic lens, noting how such labels "are often plucked from later texts to explain the function and symbolism of items like the Corleck Head or Tandragee Idol, much as ethnic labels have been used to explain material phenomena regarded as Romano-British."[16]

• St. Patrick's Cathedral