Mother Shipton born Ursula Sontheil was an English witch / soothsayer, known as the Yorkshire Sibyl. She is supposed to have been born at an ancient well with mystical powers somewhere around the year 1486 - 1488.
She lived during the reign of Henry VIII of England and predicted his victory over France in 1513 . She prophesied the Dissolution of the Monasteries. She was an early archetype of the stereotypical witch that you see adorning modern homes around Halloween.
She was born to 16 year old Agatha Southei. Ursula was said to be extremely hideous as a baby, grotesquely deformed. Her head was too huge, her cheeks sunken and hollow, her limbs distorted. Legend says her eyes glowed and she was born with a full set of teeth. Legends further state that at her birth gruesome thunderous noises lemenated from the cave. People who lived around it believed it to be proof that she was Satans daughter.
Her power to see into the future made her well known not only in her home town but throughout England.
She is credited with having predicted important historical events many years ahead of their time.
The Great Fire of London in 1666
The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588
Modern technology
Her own death in 1561Unlike Nostradamus and many other soothsayers/seers she was not overly vague in her predictions. Some of her the predictions attributed to Mother Shipton were hoaxes concocted after after death.
The first record of her prophecy pertaining to Cardinal Wolsey dates from 1641, long after he had died. Her prophecies about future technology, and about the world coming to an end in 1881, first appeared in print in the 1862 edition of her sayings, and Charles Hindley, the editor , later admitted that he had composed them.
An unfortunate happenstance surrounding this seer is that is not possible to tell what is written by her, and what is written later by hoaxers. The poem below was not publicized till nearly a century after her demise.
Even if that be the case {Mid 1600s} there are striking insights into modern technological advances. In the one instance where she gives an actual numeric date - 1926- her predictions are extremely accurate.
And now a word, in uncouth rhyme
Of what shall be in future time.
Then upside down the world shall be
And gold found at the root of tree
All England's sons that plough the land
Shall oft be seen with Book in hand.
The poor shall now great wisdom know
Great houses stand in far-flung vale
All covered o'er with snow and hail.
A carriage without horse will go
Disaster fill the world with woe.
In London, Primrose Hill shall be
In centre hold a Bishop's See
And water shall great wonders do
How strange. And yet it shall come true.
Through towering hills proud men shall ride
No horse or ass move by his side.
Beneath the water, men shall walk
Shall ride, shall sleep, shall even talk.
And in the air men shall be seen
In white and black and even green.
A great man then, shall come and go
For prophecy declares it so.
In water, iron, then shall float
As easy as a wooden boat
Gold shall be seen in stream and stone
In land that is yet unknown.
And England shall admit a Jew
You think this strange, but it is true
The Jew that once was held in scorn
Shall of a Christian then be born.
A house of glass shall come to pass
In England. But Alas, alas
A war will follow with the work
Where dwells the Pagan and the Turk.
These states will lock in fiercest strife
And seek to take each other's life.
When North shall thus divide the south
And Eagle build in Lion's mouth
Then tax and blood and cruel war
Shall come to every humble door.
Three times shall lovely sunny France
Be led to play a bloody dance
Before the people shall be free
Three tyrant rulers shall she see.
Three rulers in succession be
Each springs from different dynasty.
Then when the fiercest strife is done
England and France shall be as one.
The British olive shall next then twine
In marriage with a German vine.
Men walk beneath and over streams
Fulfilled shall be their wondrous dreams.
For in those wondrous far off days
The women shall adopt a craze
To dress like men, and trousers wear
And to cut off their locks of hair.
They'll ride astride with brazen brow
As witches do on broomstick now.
And roaring monsters with man atop
Does seem to eat the verdant crop
And men shall fly as birds do now
And give away the horse and plough.
There'll be a sign for all to see
Be sure that it will certain be.
Then love shall die and marriage cease
And nations wane as babes decrease.
And wives shall fondle cats and dogs
And men live much the same as hogs.
In nineteen hundred and twenty six
Build houses light of straw and sticks.
For then shall mighty wars be planned
And fire and sword shall sweep the land.
When pictures seem alive with movements free
When boats like fishes swim beneath the sea,
When men like birds shall scour the sky
Then half the world, deep drenched in blood shall die.
For those who live the century through
In fear and trembling this shall do.
Flee to the mountains and the dens
To bog and forest and wild fens.
For storms will rage and oceans roar
When Gabriel stands on sea and shore
And as he blows his wondrous horn
Old worlds die and new be born.
A fiery Dragon will cross the sky
Six times before this earth shall die
Mankind will tremble and frightened be
For the sixth heralds in this prophecy.
For seven days and seven nights
Man will watch this awesome sight.
The tides will rise beyond their ken
To bite away the shores and then
The mountains will begin to roar
And earthquakes split the plain to shore.
And flooding waters, rushing in
Will flood the lands with such a din
That mankind cowers in muddy fen
And snarls about his fellow men.
He bares his teeth and fights and kills
And secrets food in secret hills
And ugly in his fear, he lies
.... to kill marauders, thieves and spies.
Man flees in terror from the floods
And kills, and rapes and lies in blood
And spilling blood by mankind's hands
Will stain and bitter many lands.
And when the Dragon's tail is gone,
Man forgets, and smiles, and carries on
To apply himself -- too late, too late
For mankind has earned deserved fate.
His masked smile -- his false grandeur
Will serve the Gods their anger stir.
And they will send the Dragon back
To light the sky -- his tail will crack
Upon the earth and rend the earth....
and then Begin the human race again.
But not on land already there
But on ocean beds, stark, dry and bare
Not every soul on Earth will die
As the Dragon's tail goes sweeping by.
Not every land on earth will sink
But these will wallow in stench and stink
Of rotting bodies of beast and man
Of vegetation crisped on land. ...
You think it strange. But it will be.
And before the race is built anew
A silver serpent comes to view
And spew out men of like unknown To mingle with the earth now grown
The children with the second sight.
A natural thing so that they might
Grow graceful, humble and when they do
The Golden Age will start anew.
(These verses were on the outer wrapping of scrolls): Reprinted with no-ones permission: They are Public Domain !.
I know I go -- I know I'm free
I know that this will come to be.
Secreted this -- for this will be
Found by later dynasty.
A dairy maid, a bonny lass
Shall kick this tome as she does pass
And five generations she shall breed
Before one male child does learn to read.
This is then held year by year
Till an iron monster trembling fear
Eats parchment, words and quill and ink
And mankind is given time to think.
And only when this comes to be
Will mankind read this prophecy
But one man's sweet's another's bane
So I shall not have burned in vain. -Mother Shipton
