MOTHER SHIPTON

MOTHER SHIPTON,

her connection to Temora, her life and prophecies.

When local gold miners named their mine “The Mother Shipton”, hoping she would bring them good luck, as indeed happened with the finding of “The Mother Shipton Gold Nugget”, the largest found on the Temora goldfield, Temora was given a direct connection to this lady, her story, prophecies and hometown of Knaresborough in Yorkshire. 

Mother Shipton herself, was born Ursula Southeil in 1488, during the reign of Henry V11, the father of Henry V111. According to the local legend she was born in the cave beside the River Nidd (The cave can be visited in the parkland running through Knaresborough) during a massive thunderstorm. Her mother, Agatha, was just 15 yrs old and refused to identify the father to the authorities.

                Agatha raised her daughter on her own for two years in this cave until the Abbott of Beverley took pity on them and found a local family to take them in. Later, Agatha was put into a distant nunnery and never saw her daughter again.

                Ursula grew up in the Knaresborough area, but being a strange child, she was unmercifully taunted and teased. She had a large crooked nose, a bent back and her legs were twisted. In many ways she looked a proverbial witch. So, in time, she found she was better off living alone away from the taunts, and chose to live in the forest in the cave where she was born. Here she was able to quietly explore the forest, collecting flowers and plants and became noted for the healing potions she created.

                When she was 24, she met a young man, Tobias Shipton, a carpenter from York. Sadly Tobias died two years later, and they had no children, but Ursula kept the surname Shipton. Later, as an old woman, she became known as Mother Shipton.

                She also became well known for her skill in telling the future and many people came to learn her prophesy for them. Even King Henry V111 sent messengers to obtain her advice. So wide was her reputation, that she was able to make a living through her potions and prophesies, becoming the best known prophetess in British history.

                Many of her prophecies have been recorded and some 50 editions of books about her and her prophecies have been published. One of the first published was by Joanne Waller, who died shortly afterwards at the age of 94. In her younger days she had personally known Ursula Shipton and recorded many of her sayings.

                While Mother Shipton made many prophecies, some have probably been much embellished or wrongly attributed to her. Among those known to be her actual prophecies are the attempted invasion and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the invention of machines to travel in such as cars, steel ships and planes. Samuel Pepys, the great English diarist says she foretold the Great Fire of London in 1666. She prophesied “the World will end when the High Bridge is thrice fallen.” This bridge, near the lower end of the park walk, not the rail viaduct which did not exist during her lifetime, has already fallen once.

The black and white painted hotel across the road is called “The World’s End”, getting its name from this prophecy.

                Mother Shipton died in 1561 at the age of 73, having lived through the reign of Henry V111.

                Her epitaph tells us:           Here lies she who never lied,

Whose skill often has been tried;

Her prophesies still shall survive

And ever keep her name alive.

                Her prophecies are recorded in her poems.
                However, using Google and Trove, other issues become very obvious. There appear to be many versions of her poetry, not all saying the same things, of varying lengths and some containing obvious errors or contradictions. So we must consider that over the years others have interfered with what may have been the original version.

                Most versions in the newspapers start with the line beginning “A house of glass” and end with the line : “England and France shall be as one.” In between there are many variations of the words.

The last two lines about the end of the world coming in 1881, caused great consternation in Britain and other countries where people of all levels of society steadfastly believed in her prophecies. Fortunately they were proved to be a hoax, admitted to by Mr. Charles Hindley.( see mention at end of this article.)

A house of glass shall come to pass

In merry England; but alas,

War will follow with the work,

In the land of the Turk.

And State and State in fierce strife

Struggle for each other’s life.

Carriages without horses shall go

And accidents fill the world with woe.

In London Primrose Hill shall be,

And the centre of a Bishop’s see.

Around the world thought shall fly

In the twinkling of an eye.

Through the hills man shall ride

And neither horse nor ass bestride;

Under water man shall float

As easily as a wooden boat.

Gold shall be found and shown

In a land that’s now unknown,

Fire and water shall wonders do,

And England shall admit a Jew;

Three times three shall lovely France

Be led to dance a bloody dance,

Before her people shall be free;

Three tyrant rulers shall she see,

Each springing from a different dynasty.

And when the last great fight is one,

England and France shall be as one.

And now a word in uncouth rhyme

Of what shall be in later time.

In those wonderful far-off days

Women shall get a strange odd craze

To dress like men, and breeches wear,

And cut off their beautiful locks of hair,

And ride astride with brazen brow

As witches do on broomsticks now.

Then love shall die and marriage cease,

And babes and sucklings so decrease.

Then wives will fondle cats and dogs

And men shall live the same as hogs.

In eighteen hundred and ninety six

Build your houses on rotten sticks;

And then shall mighty wars be planned,

And fires and swords sweep over land.

And those who live the century through,

In fear and trembling this will do,

Fly to the mountains and to the glens,

To bogs and forests and wild dens,

For tempests will rage and oceans will roar,

And Gabriel stand on sea and shore

And as he toots his wonderful horn,

Old world shall die and new be born.

In the air men shall be seen

In white, in black, in green:

Now, strange, but they shall be true,

The world upside down shall be,

And gold shall be found at the roots of a tree.

Taxes for blood and for war

Will come to every door.

All England’s sons that plough the land

Shall be seen book in hand.

Learning shall so ebb and flow

The poor shall most wisdom know.

Water shall flow where corn doth grow,

Corn shall grow where water doth flow.

Houses shall appear in the vales below,

And covered by hail and snow.

The world then to an end shall come

In eighteen hundred and eighty-one.

From the above it can be deduced that she foretold:

                -The building of the Crystal Palace, London.

                -The Turkish War.

                -The advent of the motor car.

                -The invention of Wireless / radio.

                -The building of submarines.

                -The finding of gold in Australia.

                -The Franco-Prussian War.

                -The British and French Alliance.

                -Women’s customs and fashions of today.

                -The decline of the birthrate.

                -The evacuation cities to the country.

                -A topsy-turvy world as we see today.

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                The following article provides an insight into the problems created when some writers used her supposed works as the basis for adding their own under her name.

                The Australian Town and Country Journal of Saturday 19^th July, 1879 on page 28 records:

                Early in 1877 there was published an extract from an evening paper embobying certain statements and “a copy of the most famous of the pretended prophecies of Mother Shipton.  Here is the passage: ‘The inclosed (sic) ‘Mother Shipton’s prophecy’ has been copied from a work published in A.D. 1448, and now in the British Museum.

Carriages without horses shall go

And accidents fill the world with woe,

Around the world thought shall fly

In the twinkling of an eye.

Water shall yet more wonders do;

How strange, yet shall be true.

The world upside down shall be,

And gold shall be found at the root of a tree.

Through the hills man shall ride,

And no horse or ass be at his side.

Under the water man shall walk,

Shall ride, shall  sleep, shall talk.

In the air men shall be seen,

In white, in black, in green.

Iron in water shall float

As easy as a wooden boat.

Gold shall be found and shown

In a land that is not now known.

Fire and water shall wonders due (do);

England shall at last admit a Jew.

The world to an end shall come

In eighteen hundred and eighty-one.”

Such is the communication which our contemporary inserted without note or comment; but we append a few observations, which we shall now substantially reproduce, because so much interest was excited by the matter that we are still frequently applied to for information about it. For this reason, and for others we again give a place to the lines and some observations.

The editor of our contemporary was caught napping. Mother Shipton is referred to in the reign of Henry V111, or nearly a century later than 1448, and we can discover no trace of any edition of her so-called prophecies until 1641, or a hundred years after she is supposed to have died. With regard to the “prophecy” alleged, it could not have been copied from a work published in 1448, because no English book was printed so early; not even Caxton had then introduced the race of printers and publishers into this country. The language also proves it modern, e.g., the very first word “carriages,” certainly did not signify coaches, but luggage, in the 15^th century. More than this – as a matter of fact, the “prophecy” was the composition of a person whose name we know, and who is, we believe, still living within a hundred miles of the Metropolis. His acknowledgement of the authorship was published in the “Notes and Queries.” The edition into which he foisted the lines is, of course the “work now in the British Museum,” to which the correspondent of our contemporary so Jesnitically refers. It is simply wonderful that people should be so easily cheated and so hardly taught. Since the exposure, the spurious piece has been again and again referred to as ancient; and it has, moreover, continued to appear in editions of the farrago of nonsense ascribed to Mother Shipton. Under the circumstances it is perfectly justifiable republish it with a plain statement of facts. We hope we have now said all that is necessary to enlighten our correspondents on the subject of these silly modern rhymes, for which Mr. Charles Hindley is to be held responsible, if our memory is not at fault.  – LONDON PAPER.

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                This article has been produced using Google, and newspaper sources found on Trove, for the Temora Shire Heritage Committee, by Ken McCubbin, 2020.

                With my wife, Wilma, we visited Knaresborough some years back to see the cave and the petrifying waters etc., in the parkland that runs down one side of the River Nidd. It is now a very commercial site.

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