EXTRAORDINARY SUPERSTITION IN ENGLAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 142, 16 June 1879, Page 4

EXTRAORDINARY SUPERSTITION IN ENGLAND.

A curious case of superstition has just come to ligbt in Mid-Somerset. It seems that tbe laboring classes in that locality, like those of most other rural districts in England, hold, or held, sacred certain supposed prophecies of " Mother Shipton," whose topographical knowledge, if we are to believe all that is said of her, must have been little less marvellous than her insight ioto the future. Of these prophecies the most widely believed in had reference to the

fate of Ham Hill, a large etona quarry in the neighborhood of Yeovil, sail aprominent feature of the landscape for miles around. It was to the effect that at noon ou the Good Friday of 18T9 Ham Hill ahouU suddenLy be aw^Uawed : up by nn earthquake, and that at the aame time Yaovil should be visited by a tremendous flood. With such real ; anxiety was last Good Friday looked forward to iv consequence, that people actually left the locality with their families and went to stay with their friends in other parts of the country until the dreaded " visitation " should be over; others, whose faith was leas robust, nevertheless thought it advisable to remove their pots and pans from the shelves of their cupboards and to slow away their clocks and looking glasses iv places where they were not likely to be shattered by the shock of the earthquake; others, again, suspended gardening operations for a day or two, thinking it mere waste to commit good seed to earth that was like to behtive so treacherously. Oa the morning of Good Friday iiaelf large numbers of people— many of them from a distance — flocked to the spo% or as near to the spot as they dared venture, to await,, half incredulous and half iv terror, the stroke of twelve and the fulfilment of the prophecy. When, however, the appointed hour had passed, and Ham Hill still stood unabashed, they began to look sheepishly into each other's faces and to move away. At present in Mid-Somerset Mother Shipton and her prophecies are somewhat at a discount.