Mother Shipton

Ursula Southeil (c. 1488–1561) (also variously spelt as Ursula Southill, Ursula Soothtell[1] or Ursula Sontheil[2][3]), better known as Mother Shipton, is said to have been an English soothsayer and prophetess. The first publication of her prophecies, which did not appear until 1641, eighty years after her reported death, contained a number of mainly regional predictions, but only two prophetic verses – neither of which foretold the end of the world, despite widespread assumptions to that effect.[4]

Engraving of Mother Shipton of unknown date by an unknown artist
Mother Shipton's cave

One of the most notable editions of her prophecies was published in 1684.[4] It states that she was born in Knaresborough, Yorkshire, in a cave now known as Mother Shipton's Cave which, along with the Petrifying Well and associated parkland, is operated as a visitor attraction. She was reputed to be hideously ugly. The book also claims that she married Toby Shipton, a local carpenter, near York in 1512 and told fortunes and made predictions throughout her life.

It is recorded in the diaries of Samuel Pepys that whilst surveying the damage to London caused by the Great Fire in the company of the Royal Family they were heard to discuss Mother Shipton's prophecy of the event.[5]

Prophecies
Mother Shipton's house

The most famous claimed edition of Mother Shipton's prophecies foretells many modern events and phenomena. Widely quoted today as if it were the original, it contains over a hundred prophetic rhymed couplets in notably non-16th-century language and includes the now-famous lines:

The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty one.[6]

However, this version did not appear in print until 1862, and its true author, one Charles Hindley, subsequently admitted in print that he had invented it.[7] This invented prophecy has appeared over the years with different dates and in (or about) several countries (for example in the late 1970s many news articles about Mother Shipton appeared setting the date at 1981). The 1920s (subsequently much reprinted) booklet The Life and Prophecies of Ursula Sontheil better known as Mother Shipton[8] stated the date as 1991.[9][10]

Among other well-known lines from Hindley's fake version (often quoted as if they were original) are:

A Carriage without a horse shall go;
 Disaster fill the world with woe...
 In water iron then shall float,
 As easy as a wooden boat.[6]

Legacy
Mother Shipton moth

Quite who Mother Shipton was or what exactly she said is not definitively known. What is certain is that her name became linked with many tragic events and strange goings-on recorded all over the UK, Australia, and North America throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Many fortune tellers used her effigy and statue, presumably for purposes of association marketing. Many pubs were named after her. Only two survive, one near her birthplace in Knaresborough and the other in Portsmouth, where there is a statue of her above the door.

A caricature of Mother Shipton was used in early pantomime and is believed by historians to be the forerunner of the Panto dame.

The Mother Shipton moth (Callistege mi) is named after her. Each wing's pattern resembles a hag's head in profile.

A fundraising campaign was started in 2013 with the goal of raising £35,000 to erect a statue of Shipton in Knaresborough. Completed in October 2017, the statue sits on a bench in the town's Market Square close to a statue of 18th-century road engineer John Metcalfe, known as Blind Jack.[11]

Mother Shipton is referred to in Daniel Defoe's "Journal of the Plague Year,": "These terrors and apprehensions of the people led them into a thousand weak, foolish, and wicked things, which they wanted not a sort of people really wicked to encourage them to: and this was running about to fortune-tellers, cunning-men, and astrologers to know their fortune, or, as it is vulgarly expressed, to have their fortunes told them, their nativities calculated, and the like.... And this trade grew so open and so generally practised that it became common to have signs and inscriptions set up at doors: 'Here lives a fortune-teller', 'Here lives an astrologer', 'Here you may have your nativity calculated', and the like; and Friar Bacon's brazen-head, which was the usual sign of these people's dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, or else the sign of Mother Shipton...."[12]

See also
  • 2012 Doomsday prediction

References
  1. The Strange and Wonderful History of Mother Shipton, London, 1686
  2. "Ursula Sontheil (1488-1561)". History and Women. 8 May 2010. Retrieved 6 September 2012.
  3. "The Life and Prophecies of URSULA SONTHEIL Better Known as MOTHER SHIPTON . Knaresborough, Yorkshire: Amazon.co.uk: J.C. Simpson: Books". Amazon.co.uk. 2 January 2011. Retrieved 6 September 2012.
  4. Mother Shipton's Prophecies (Mann, 1989)
  5. Entry for 20 October 1666, cited in Mother Shipton's Prophecies (Mann, 1989)
  6. Harrison, William Henry (1881). Mother Shipton investigated. The result of critical examination in the British Museum Library, of the literature relating to the Yorkshire sibyl. London.
  7. Notes and Queries, 26 April 1873
  8. "The Life and Prophecies of URSULA SONTHEIL Better Known as MOTHER SHIPTON: Books". Amazon.co.uk. Retrieved 6 September 2012.
  9. Simpson, J. C. (24 August 2017). "The Life and Prophecies of URSULA SONTHEIL Better Known as MOTHER SHIPTON ". The Waverley Press – via Amazon.
  10. "12 failed end of the world predictions, for 1990 to 1994". Religioustolerance.org. 3 November 1993. Retrieved 6 September 2012.
  11. "Knaresborough campaign for Mother Shipton statue". BBC News. 3 October 2013. Retrieved 9 November 2013.
  12. A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe, The Project Gutenberg EBook, 2006
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