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Mother Shipton

© Florence Cardinal

Carriages without horses shall go.
Around the world thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye.
Iron in water shall float
As easy as a wooden boat.
Gold shall be found, and found
In a land that's not now known.

Thus spoke a woman known as Mother Shipton way back in the fifteenth century, auguring events many hundreds of years in the future.

Mother Shipton was born Ursula Southeil in a riverside cave, it is said in the midst of a severe thunderstorm. This cave was in the wilds of Northern Yorkshire. The year was 1488. Ursula's mother is alleged to have been a witch gifted with the powers of healing and clairvoyance. She was also quite capable of placing a hex on anyone who crossed her. The old witch died when Ursula was born, passing her psychic powers down to her infant daughter.

Ursula was no beauty with her big-boned, slightly deformed body and long wart-scarred nose. In fact she was the typical picture of today's Halloween witch. Still, she did manage to snag a husband. When she was twenty-four, she married Toby Shipton, a young carpenter. No more is heard of Toby, but Ursula Southeil now became Mother Shipton

Mother Shipton isn't as well known as Nostradamus, but many of her prophesies were just as profound and far-seeing. In her later years, she returned to live in the Yorkshire cave where she was born and became a virtual hermit. She spent hours scribbling down her crude, prophetic verses. These rhymes foretold of inventions many years into the future-- the automobile, the submarine, telephone, telegraph and ships built of iron.Read the prophecies

She spoke of the discovery of gold in a far-off land as yet unknown, of the great fire of London, the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the wonders of modern technology. Some of her verses may well foretell things that have not as yet come to pass. She even predicted that the world would end after the bridge near Shipton cave collapsed for the third time. It has now collapsed twice.

Mother Shipton was burned at the stake, as she had predicted, in 1561, leaving behind a legacy of prophesy for the future of a world she would never see. Believers have built a memorial to this remarkable woman in Shipton Cave, Knaresborough, Yorkshire, England.. Here she was born. Here she wrote many of her verses and here she is buried

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