Who is Sheila?

Dymphna Lonergan

In 1828 the Sydney newspaper, the Monitor, reported a street fight that had occurred in Sydney on Saint Patrick’s day. The report included the comment that following the fight ‘many a piteous Shela stood wiping the gory locks of her Paddy’. This is the earliest written evidence of the use of the Australian word sheila. The Oxford English Dictionary defines sheila as ‘a young girl or young woman; a girlfriend. Playfully affectionate and predominantly in male use’. The OED also includes the Irish origin of the word:

It may represent a generic use of the (originally Irish) personal name Sheila, the counterpart of Paddy...in any case, it became assimilated to this at some later stage.

We can detect some uncertainty in the OED commentary on the word sheila; a sense that some information does not fit, that something is missing. More recently, the author of The Dinkum Dictionary, Susan Butler, is confident that

‘Sheila’ was a common female name in Ireland, used alongside the name ‘Paddy’ to represent the archetypal Irish couple. From this early usage (dating from the 1820s in Britain) ‘Sheila’ came to mean any female, whether Irish or not. This British use of ‘sheila’ was then transported to the colonies.[1]

I suggest that the reason we have such divergent views on the origin of the Australian English word sheila is because of an etymological error made from the beginning. It is surprising that no one, apparently, has questioned these written assertions that the name Sheila is common in Ireland. It is not. Nor has the name Sheila ever been used in the generic sense of a counterpart to Paddy in Ireland. Neither was the name Sheila common in eighteenth century Australia. Between 1788 and 1828 over two thousand female convicts were transported to Australia from Irish ports.[1] The most common name among them was Mary, followed by Ann/e, Catherine, Margaret, Elizabeth, Brigid and Sara. These, of course, are official first names. Many of these women would have used Irish names or diminutives of the English names, such as: M·ire,¡ine, C·it, Kitty, Kathleen, Peg, Maggie, …ilis, BrÌd, Bridie and Biddy. There were no Sheilas on board those convict ships. The Irish language name SÌle is usually translated into English as Julia. There were no Julias on board these convict ships. That the word sheila as a term for a ‘girl’ or ‘girlfriend’ in Australian English is indisputable. That the generic nature of the name derives from the Irish female first name is disputable. If a generic name, a counterpart to Paddy, had existed at that time it would most likely have been the name Biddy, a shortened for of Brigid. This is a name that was used in America in the nineteenth century as a term for an Irish servant (see entry for biddy in the OED). Given this, the question arises as to why the name Sheila became associated with that of an Irishwoman in Australia, and later as a generic term for Australian women? Why did Australian sheila not also surface in Britain or America, places that experienced a greater number of Irish migrants at any time than Australia? These factors cast doubt on the popular belief that Aus. sheila derived from the Irish female name Sheila. The Irish language, not Irish English, provides a more satisfactory explanation for the origin of the Australian word sheila.

In Ireland, the Irish language word SÌle, which is always written with a capital ‘S’, is used generically in the world of nature and mythology.[1] As applied to humans, however, it is usually a derogatory term, especially when referring to male behaviour. The following are some Irish dictionary definitions:

SÌle: ‘An effeminate man’. ‘A man too fond of

female society, a mollycoddle’. ‘He’s around the

house like an old sheelah’[1]

Sheela: Used in the South as a reproachful

name for a boy or man inclined to do work

or interest himself in affairs properly belonging

to women. See ‘Molly’.[1]

SÌle: HomaighnÈasach

This last dictionary definition translates as ‘homosexual’. It occurs in FoclÛir na CollaÌochta, a recent Irish language dictionary of sexual terminology.[1] The majority of the words in this dictionary do not occur in standard Irish language dictionaries. As the OED suggests, the Australian word sheila is also ‘predominantly in male use’. Furthermore G A Wilkes, in his study of Australian colloquialisms, states that ìno woman would refer to herself as a ‘sheila’î.[1] I suggest that this male connection is where Australian sheila is evocative of the Irish language word SÌle. Both words are also pronounced the same.

The use of the Australian term sheila by males towards males is not generally mentioned in dictionaries which focus on standard Australian English. Significantly, however, The Penguin Book of Australian Slang[1] records a secondary meaning for sheila as: ‘A man who is weak, effeminate, lacking in bravado’. Here, I suggest, is a connection with the definitions discussed earlier of the Irish word SÌle. It is significant that in Australia the official recognition that sheila may be used by males of males arises in a dictionary of slang words. It is likely that Ausralian sheila was originally a taboo word for a homosexual. In Ireland, the only dictionary to admit to the meaning of ‘homosexual’ for the word SÌle, is that recent dictionaries of sexual terminology, a work that is written entirely in the Irish language. Such words are apparently ‘taboo’ in Ireland today. They are reserved for those who use the Irish language. In this they are out of reach of the majority of the population.

In his book Iniskillane,[1] a social study of family and community in the West of Ireland, Hugh Brody outlines the divide in the roles of a typical rural Irish husband and his wife in the 1970s. The daily ritual consisted of the wife rising first and preparing breakfast for her husband and the children. The husband then went to work in the fields. The couple never ate together, and in the evenings it was customary for the husband to visit neighbours or have neighbours visit him while his wife continued with the household and family work. Finally the husband went to bed before his wife. Male and female lived separate lives, in effect, due to 'a highly developed division of sexual roles'.[1] We can presume that any noticeable crossing of this divide would have been commented upon, and in the case of a male, through the use of Irish language terminology such as cistineoir, piteog, and SÌle. Diarmaid ” Muirithe in A Dictionary of Anglo-Irish, provides for the word cistineoir the definition: A cotquean. 'A man who spends a lot of time about the house taking an interest in women's work’. For the word piteog he provides the definition:

An effeminate man. 'A man who prys into things, in

the household or elsewhere, that are supposedly or

understood to belong entirely to the sphere of women.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Irish convicts who were transported to Australia would have experienced not only a change in landscape and climate but also a way of life that was new and no doubt alienating. Especially in those early days when there was a shortage of females, and with the nature of a convict's life in the Penal Colony, work such as washing clothes, cooking and cleaning would have fallen to the male. It may be that those who were seen to be doing this work well, or who may have taken undue interest in it would have been ridiculed for demonstrating effeminacy. It may have been in this climate that the term SÌle was applied to males by males. However, given the double use of the word SÌle in Ireland, to denote not just effeminacy but also homosexuality, we must conclude that the surfacing of this Irish word in Australia may have been prompted by stress following undue exposure to this way of life:

A speaker’s ability to cope with the difficulties

of language varies according to his state of mind,

and it is well known that any kind of emotional

stress, favourable or unfavourable tends to promote

a reversion to the primary language.[1]

Many Irish-speaking convicts under the system of transportation to Australia were men from rural areas, brought up with social norms some of which were peculiar to their own small part of the world. Even before arrival in Australia, conditions on board the convict ships necessitated participation in what may have been considered women's work: cooking, cleaning, the washing of clothes and so on. However, convicts were also entering a world in which, according to Robert Hughes, homosexual activity

was as utterly pervasive in the world of hulks and penal

settlement as it is in modern penitentiaries.[1]

Hughes explains further that homosexuality was also the ‘norm’ in Hyde Oark Barracks in Sydney; young boys especially were preyed upon by old lags. It is likely that few of these boys would have had any homosexual experience before they got to Australia. This would have been doubly traumatic for a young rural Irish Catholic boy, who lived in a society where such behaviour was not only condemned by the Church, but also denied emphatically by society. In 1832 The Molesworth Committee received testimony from the Catholic Bishop of Sydney of the extent of Homosexual activity in the Colony, and its effects on the young. The bishop quoted one particular youth as saying: ‘Such things no one knows in Ireland’.[1] In addition, an 1847 report on Norfolk Island noted that

In general, it was the English who turned to

sodomy; the Irish Catholic prisoners abjured it.[1]

Whether for the purpose of condemning the activity or merely talking about it, the Irish-speaking convicts had a word for a person who took part in homosexual activity; he was a SÌle. This was a word that was known and understood among the Irish convicts and could be passed on to others but yet was a secret word and so safe to use even in the hearing of authorities. The circumstances that were favourable to the utterance of and continued use of the Irish language word SÌle in Australia were: the reversal of male/female domestic roles; homosexual activity of a violent nature; and strong religious beliefs.

The probability that Ir. SÌle meaning ‘Homosexual’ is the origin for Australian sheila is further enhanced when we consider that the word sheila as a generic name for an (Irish) female did not surface in Britain nor in America, countries which experienced far greater numbers of Irish settlers than did Australia. The Australian word sheila is geographical. It reflects the nature of Australian society at that time. Finally the Australian word sheila is a word used almost exclusively by males, is always slightly derogatory when used of females, and, according to The Penguin Book of Australian Slang can also mean

a man who is weak, effeminate, lacking in bravado

In the underworld where slang lives, this connotation for Australian sheila more clearly reflects an origin in Ir. SÌle ‘effeminate male’,’ homosexual,’ than the traditionally held origin of the Irish Christian name Sheila. The Irish language may also provide clues as to how the Australian term sheila is primarily applied to females. Most importantly, we must look to the Irish language directly as a possible source for Australian English words of unknown or uncertain origin. For too long the lure of Irish English has masked this other, more potent, source.