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The Sunday Times - Ireland
September 26, 2004
Cruel pinch put on Irish sexual desire
Jan Battles
VICTORIAN Irishmen went to extraordinary lengths to prevent themselves from becoming aroused, according to a controversial documentary on sex to be screened this week.
The Land of Sex and Sinners, made by Tyrone Productions, reveals that a range of contraptions were invented in the 19th century to curb Irishmen’s sexual appetite. The devices were designed to be worn in bed to stop “the illness of nocturnal emissions”.
According to Carmel Quinlan, a historian at University College Cork, the apparatuses were invented by doctors. “One was a ring that fitted over the penis and it had teeth, so I presume if erection occurred the teeth dug in,” she said.
A pair of modified underpants hooked up to a battery punished erections with a “stiff electric shock”.
A milder version was connected to a gramophone, which “gently woke the nocturnal emitter to their favourite musical recording”, said Quinlan.
The documentary, which will be shown on TG4 next month, also claims a well-known Irish saint nailed his penis to the ground to stop himself being aroused. St Moling, one of the most celebrated of St Kevin’s pupils at Glendalough monastery, took the drastic action after being tempted by a “wanton woman”.
Moling, who lived in extreme austerity, was making shoes one day when the woman began tempting him. In desperation, he took the awl he was using to pierce leather and stuck it through his penis, nailing himself to the ground.
He then put a curse on the woman that “her genitals would be just as deformed as his” and she was subsequently raped by a group of bandits. The saint eventually became bishop of Ferns and founded St Mullin’s monastery on the banks of the Barrow in Co Carlow.
Moling was not the only saint who mutilated himself in order to banish his lustful thoughts, according to the programme.
St Kevin rolled around in stinging nettles “until his sexuality no longer distracted him”. He also threw a girl into the lake at Glendalough in order resist temptation, drowning her.
The documentary by Tyrone Productions, the company founded by Moya Doherty and John McColgan, the makers of Riverdance, is in two parts and covers sexuality from 5000BC to the present. It claims the sexual antics of pagans so shocked the Roman church when it arrived in Ireland, that monks set about curbing sexual excess.
The programme also claims that many of Ireland’s Celtic warriors were bisexual. Cu Chulainn, the mythical hero of Ulster, is described as “a social misfit and sexually ambivalent”. An academic says that in old Irish masturbation was called a hand festival, proving that it was acceptable practice until the monks prohibited it.
“There was a profound shift in paradigm when the monastic tradition of Christianity came in,” said Jimmy Duggan, who wrote and directed the documentary. “Victorian repression harks back to that era.”
The Sunday Times - Ireland
September 26, 2004
Cruel pinch put on Irish sexual desire
Jan Battles
VICTORIAN Irishmen went to extraordinary lengths to prevent themselves from becoming aroused, according to a controversial documentary on sex to be screened this week.
The Land of Sex and Sinners, made by Tyrone Productions, reveals that a range of contraptions were invented in the 19th century to curb Irishmen’s sexual appetite. The devices were designed to be worn in bed to stop “the illness of nocturnal emissions”.
According to Carmel Quinlan, a historian at University College Cork, the apparatuses were invented by doctors. “One was a ring that fitted over the penis and it had teeth, so I presume if erection occurred the teeth dug in,” she said.
A pair of modified underpants hooked up to a battery punished erections with a “stiff electric shock”.
A milder version was connected to a gramophone, which “gently woke the nocturnal emitter to their favourite musical recording”, said Quinlan.
The documentary, which will be shown on TG4 next month, also claims a well-known Irish saint nailed his penis to the ground to stop himself being aroused. St Moling, one of the most celebrated of St Kevin’s pupils at Glendalough monastery, took the drastic action after being tempted by a “wanton woman”.
Moling, who lived in extreme austerity, was making shoes one day when the woman began tempting him. In desperation, he took the awl he was using to pierce leather and stuck it through his penis, nailing himself to the ground.
He then put a curse on the woman that “her genitals would be just as deformed as his” and she was subsequently raped by a group of bandits. The saint eventually became bishop of Ferns and founded St Mullin’s monastery on the banks of the Barrow in Co Carlow.
Moling was not the only saint who mutilated himself in order to banish his lustful thoughts, according to the programme.
St Kevin rolled around in stinging nettles “until his sexuality no longer distracted him”. He also threw a girl into the lake at Glendalough in order resist temptation, drowning her.
The documentary by Tyrone Productions, the company founded by Moya Doherty and John McColgan, the makers of Riverdance, is in two parts and covers sexuality from 5000BC to the present. It claims the sexual antics of pagans so shocked the Roman church when it arrived in Ireland, that monks set about curbing sexual excess.
The programme also claims that many of Ireland’s Celtic warriors were bisexual. Cu Chulainn, the mythical hero of Ulster, is described as “a social misfit and sexually ambivalent”. An academic says that in old Irish masturbation was called a hand festival, proving that it was acceptable practice until the monks prohibited it.
“There was a profound shift in paradigm when the monastic tradition of Christianity came in,” said Jimmy Duggan, who wrote and directed the documentary. “Victorian repression harks back to that era.”
:blink: