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The prophecies of Mother Shipton
Mother Shipton, or to use her proper name Ursula Southeil, was an English soothsayer, prophet and, some would say, witch. She was born in 1488 in a cave in Knaresborough, Yorkshire. At her birth, the midwife claimed to smell sulphur and reported that a terrifying crack of thunder rang out as the baby was born. She was said to be so ugly and deformed that locals claimed she was a child of the Devil and the poor infant was soon abandoned by her mother and brought up in a monastery. Strangely, the cave in which she was born contained a mysterious ‘petrifying well’ that turned everyday items into stone.
Marriage and prophecies
Ursula married carpenter Toby Shipton in 1512 and, soon afterwards, seemed to develop the gift of seeing into the future, including foretelling the Great Fire of London: ‘disaster fill the world with woe, in London, Primrose Hill.’
One of her most remarkable prophecies came when Cardinal Wolsey sought to arrest her. Mother Shipton prophesied that the angry cardinal ‘would never enter York’. Right enough, as the cardinal rode towards York he was arrested by King Henry VIII’s soldiers and returned to London to face a charge of high treason. He never entered York.
But Mother Shipton is perhaps most famous for her prophecies concerning modern technology. She is said to have predicted the development of modern ships (‘in water iron then shall float, as easy as a wooden boat’), submarines (‘when boats, like fishes, swim beneath the sea’) and even the internet (‘around the world, men’s thoughts will fly, in the twinkling of an eye’).
After her death
Shipton was known throughout England when she died in 1561. Her name thereafter was linked with all kinds of disasters and strange events and many fortune tellers kept effigies of her. There is even a ‘Mother Shipton Moth’, which bears an uncanny image of her head on its wings. She was also made a caricature in theatre shows and historians believe this was the forerunner of the modern pantomime dame.
Today, Mother Shipton’s birthplace is a popular tourist attraction and scholars still study her prophecies to see if she has any more warnings for the future. What do you think?