Ursula Southeil (possibly Ursula Southill or Ursula Soothtell), better known as Mother Shipton, was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 soothsayer

Fortune-telling

Fortune-telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. The scope of fortune-telling is in principle identical with the practice of divination...

 and prophetess

Prophecy

Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...

. 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.

One of the most notable editions of her prophecies was published in 1684. It states that she was born in Knaresborough

Knaresborough

Knaresborough is an old and historic market town, spa town and civil parish in the Borough of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, located on the River Nidd, four miles east of the centre of Harrogate.-History:...

, Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

, in a cave now known as Mother Shipton's Cave

Mother Shipton's Cave

Mother Shipton's Cave is at Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, England, near to the River Nidd. Nearby is a petrifying well which has been a tourist attraction since 1630 due to its association with the legendary soothsayer and prophetess Mother Shipton , born Ursula Southeil, wife of Toby Shipton....

, that along with the Petrifying Well

Petrifying well

-Nature:If an object is placed into such a well and left there for a period of months or years the object acquires a stony exterior. At one time this property was believed to be a result of magic or witchcraft, but it is an entirely natural phenomenon and due to a process of evaporation and...

 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

York

York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...

 in 1512 and told fortunes and made predictions throughout her life.

It is recorded in the diaries of Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...

 that whilst surveying the damage to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 caused by the Great Fire

Great Fire of London

The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...

 in the company of the Royal Family

Royal family

A royal family is the extended family of a king or queen regnant. The term imperial family appropriately describes the extended family of an emperor or empress, while the terms "ducal family", "grand ducal family" or "princely family" are more appropriate to describe the relatives of a reigning...

 they were heard to discuss Mother Shipton's prophecy of the event.

Prophecies

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-sixteenth-century language and includes the now-famous lines:

The world to an end shall come

In eighteen hundred and eighty one.

This supposed 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). 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.

Part of her most famous prophecy is below:


"Carriages without horses shall go,
And accidents fill the world with woe.
Around the world thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye.
The world upside down shall be
And gold be found at the root of a tree.
Through hills man shall ride,
And no horse be at his side.
Under water men shall walk,
Shall ride, shall sleep, shall talk.
In the air men shall be seen,
In white, in black, in green;
Iron in the water shall float,
As easily as a wooden boat.
Gold shall be found and shown
In a land that's now not known.
Fire and water shall wonders do,
England shall at last admit a foe.
The world to an end shall come,
In eighteen hundred and eighty one."

Legacy

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 17/18/19th 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

Knaresborough

Knaresborough is an old and historic market town, spa town and civil parish in the Borough of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, located on the River Nidd, four miles east of the centre of Harrogate.-History:...

 and the other in Portsmouth

Portsmouth

Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...

 where there is a lifesize statue above the door.

A caricature of Mother Shipton was used in early pantomime

Pantomime

Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...

 and is believed by historians to be the forerunner of the Panto dame.

There is a moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

, Callistege mi

Mother Shipton Moth

The Mother Shipton Moth, is a moth of the Noctuidae family. It was classified by Carl Alexander Clerck in 1759, and is also known under the name of Euclidia mi. In Finnish it is known as Piirtoyökkönen and in German as Scheck-Tageule. Its habitat spans over most of Europe, Siberia, the Far East...

, named after her. It seemingly bears a profile of a hag's head on each wing.

External links

• Mother Shipton's Cave
• Mother Shipton, Her Life and Prophecies Mysterious Britain & Ireland