MOTHER SHIPTON’S PROPHECY

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 260, 17 November 1939, Page 4

MOTHER SHIPTON’S PROPHECY

A FABRICATION A correspondent,/ Mr. C. Brown, of Opotiki has-'written the" following fetter in connection with the recent contribution published in a recent issue of the Opotiki News and which has caused considerable comment. The general opinion has been that the “Prophecy” was too accurate to be true and this is clearly shown by Air. Brown who: writes: “In reference to the “Mother .Shipton Prophecy” published in the News on Friday last, 1 am forwarding evidence bv the famous authority on‘tlfe English language, John O’ London, that this so-called prediction, was only a hoax and that, moreover, in your printed version much has since been added to the original form.” John O’London writes as follows in “Is It Good English” : Interest mi what is quite erroneously called “Mother Shipton’s Prophecy” is not dead, though the “prophecy” itself has been deed as mutton since the year 1881. A correspondent lias asked me to quote its words. They were commonly circulated in this form

‘‘ANCIENT PREDICTION (Entitled by popular tradition Mother Sbip-ton’s Prophecy). Published) in 1448, republished in 1641. “Carriages without lior.ses shall go, And accidents lill the world with woe. Around the earth thoughts shall fly In the twinkling ol an eye. The world upside down shall lie, And geld he found at the root of a tree: Thiough hills men 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 water shall float, As easily as a wooden boat. Gold shall be foumli and shown in a land that’s not now known. Fire and water shall wonders do, .'England shall at hist adnyt a too. The- world to an end shall come lu eighteen hundred and’ eiglit-ono.” These lines spread a. kind of terror among uneducated people, and among children. The last couplet gave me shudders in the ’seventies. Many will remember their effect. Yet the rhymes arc no older than 1862, when they were written by Charles Hindley, a well-known London bookseller and publisher. * 'The ‘“Prophecy” had long engaged the correspondents of Notes and Queries, more than one of whom had called for proof that it had any antiquity. At last, in the issue of April 26th., 1873, while, to my own recollection they wore still held in awe, the following announcement appeared. It would have comforted me greatly had! I known of it. “MIOTHEB- .SHIPTON’S PROPHECIES.—Air. Charles Hindley, of Brighton, in a letter to us, lias made a clean breast of having fabricated the ‘Phophccy’ quoted at page 450 of our last volume [the lines quoted above] , with some ten others included in his reprint of a chan-book version, published in 1862.” This is accepted as the whole truth of the matter in the article on Mother Shipton in the “‘Dictionary of National Biography,” in which it is stated that this interesting lady “is. in all likelihood. a wholly mythical personage.”