Sheila NaGeira, Sheila Mageila, Sheila Na Geira Pike, or Princess Sheila is a legendary 17th-century Irish noblewoman regarded in Carbonear, Newfoundland as an ancestor of the locally prominent Pike family.
Legend
The family legend first appeared in print in a 1934 article on Harbour Grace by William A. Munn. It states that Sheila lived in the early 17th century and was from the recently dispossessed Gaelic nobility in Connacht. Catholic education being illegal in Ireland, she was sent to France to a convent school where her aunt was abbess. On the voyage there or back her ship was captured, first by a Dutch warship, and then by an English privateer captained by Peter Easton on its way to Newfoundland. En route Easton's lieutenant Gilbert Pike and Sheila fell in love; they landed at Harbour Grace, were married by the ship's chaplain, and settled first in Mosquito (now Bristol's Hope) and later in Carbonear.
Munn's 1934 version states that Sheila and Gilbert's firstborn was "the first white child in Newfoundland", predating Nicholas Guy's son born in 1613 at Cupids. Other versions reduce the scope to first white child in Carbonear or the west coast of Newfoundland, or extend it to all of Canada or British North America (where Virginia Dare was reputedly born in Roanoke Colony in 1587). In the 1940s, the story was broadcast several times by Joey Smallwood's radio show, The Barrelman, and included in a school reader, spreading it throughout Newfoundland. In 1958, P. J. Wakeham self-published Princess Sheila, a novel based on the legend, which sold 5,000 copies by 1960 and was republished in 1987 as The Legend of Princess Sheila. Many post-1960 versions of the legend incorporate elements of Wakehams' novel, such as Sheila's death aged 105.
The Pikes became a large family in Newfoundland, and many with a Pike in their family tree claim descent from Sheila. Linda Duncan, MP for Edmonton—Strathcona, said in the House of Commons of Canada in 2009: My family's roots, beginning around 1610 in Mosquito Point and Carbonear, were based on the shipping industry. My ancestor, Gilbert Pike, was a buccaneer. ... The most famous person in Newfoundland, Sheila NaGeira, is my ancestor.
Name
The given name Sheila is an anglicised spelling of the Irish name (old spelling ), itself originally a Gaelicisation of Celia or Cecilia which was later often equated with Julia. Sheila's second name is spelled Nagira in Munn's account. A baby girl in Carbonear was given the middle name Mageila in 1917 in honour of Sheila. All combinations of M or N with l or r are attested, while the middle vowel may be written i, e, a, ee, ei, or ie; together with the following r it may be pronounced , , , or (respectively like ERRor, squARE, nEAR, or stARt). Two-word forms like "NaGeira" and "na Geira" are found.
In aisling poems, was a common name for Ireland personified as a woman in bondage awaiting a Jacobite rising. Eponymous examples are one written by Munster poet Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin (1715–1795) and translated by James Clarence Mangan in 1849; another with the same metre translated by John D'Alton in 1831; and Ethna Carbery's Gaelic revival "Shiela ní Gara". Eugene O'Curry used the same personification in 1829 with reference to Catholic Emancipation. "Sheela na Guira", "Celia O'Gara", "Shillinaguira", and many other spellings, is a well-known Irish jig setting for the Ó Súilleabháin and D'Alton poems, attested from 1745.
"Ni Ghadharadh" (modern spelling ) is the feminine form of Ó Gadhra (O'Gara), surname of the chiefs of Luighne Connacht. Another "Sheela-na-Guira", or "Gillian Dwyer", was an O'Dwyer () from Cullahill near Borrisoleigh in Munster, who ended centuries of family resistance to the Norman Burkes by marrying Walter Burke. Na Guira has also been interpreted as Maguire (, an Ulster name). In Maria Edgeworth's 1817 play The Rose, Thistle, and Shamrock, the English Miss Gallagher scolds Irish maid Biddy for combing her hair too roughly: "You ran it fairly into my brain, you did! you're the grossest! heavy handiest!—fit only to wait on Sheelah na Ghirah, or the like." Biddy is insulted, "though I don't rightly know who that Sheelah na Ghirah was, from Adam."
In 1978 Harold Horwood suggested that "Na-gaira" was not a surname but an Irish-language epithet meaning "the beautiful", and that Sheila's true surname was O'Conor, that of the Gaelic kings of Connacht. Hiscock suggests Horwood's "Na-gaira" is a misreading of "my darling". A related elaboration of the legend is that Sheila's true name and lineage were kept secret in Newfoundland to avoid persecution.