Miscellany.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 473, 4 February 1881, Page 3

Miscellany.

OLD MOTHER SI-UPTON

The following extr ict from the New York Journal of Commerce is rather interesting : — Mother Shipton was ' a veritable character, who lived more than three hundred years ago, and uttered a number of so-called prophecies. They were, for the most part, a vague, unmeaning jumble of seeming predictions applicable to no special event, and without point or general interest. In 1641 a pamphlet containing a medley of this sort, chiefly in halting verse, was printed in London and her " Life and Curious Prophecies " were given to the public in 1G77. In ISG2, Mr Charles Hindlcy, of Brighton, England, issued what purported lo be an exact reprint ol a "Chap-book version of Mother bhipton's prophecies from tho edition of 16-18." In tins, for the first time, there were point and pith and special application. All modern discoveries were plainly described, and one prophecy read as follows :— Carriages without horses shall go, And accidents fill the world with woe ; Around this world thoughts shall fly In tbe twinkling of an eye. *■ Water shall yet more wonders do ; Now, strange, yet shall be true, Tho world upside down shall be, And gold be found at root of tree. Th'.ough hills men shall iide (> And no horse or ass bo at their 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 water shall float As easy as a wooden boat. ' Gold shall be found—and found | In a land that's now not known. Fire and water shall wonders do. England shall at last admit a Jew. ] 'The world to an end shall come In eighteen hundred and eighty-one. I This, of course, quite startled tho ' public. If all other important events of j the nineteenth century had been so aptly j described, why should not the last predic- j tion be fulfilled ? We ■ copied the t prophecy, and, without knowing any-1 -thing of its source, denounced it as a . forgery. An English paper replied that' it was an exact reprint of the old edition, for nearly 250 years on file in the British Museum. We sent our correspondent to the Museum, and learnt that thcie was a chap-book of that title bearing date 1641 ; another of 1642, containing what purported to be Mother Shipton's portrait; other prophecies dated 1648. 1667, and " Mother Shipton's Life and Curious Prophecies," complete in mi octavo edition, of 1706. We then jmvhascd thereprint and sent to have them compared. This proved that a fraud had been committed. The old prophecies were a vague jumble ot local predictions that might have been fulfilled at any or every decade since their date. All the pointed nnd interesting predictions in the new issue vcre rot in the old book, and were •either interlineations or entirely new. fragments, evidently written after the ■events they wore supposed to iirediet. We pressed the point, and then the secret came ou<\ In tho spring of 1873 jVIr Hindlcy wrote a letter, confessing that he had fabricated the prophecy above quoted, and ten others, in order to render his little book saleable.