Ma Shipton
Still feeling very rough, my teeth not having settled after extractions,
and a general malaise flu, cold, whatever... had it all December...
But I plucked myself up off my sickbed to blog..
She demonstrated poltergeist like activity as she was growing up, we're told.
She married Toby Shipton, a carpenter, and thus her name was set...
Fame as well, because of her name?
One of the earliest chapbooks about her dates to 1641,
Called 'The prophesie of Mother Shipton, in the raigne of King Henry viiith,
Foretelling the death of Cardinal Wolsey, the Lord Percy and others,
and also what would happen in ensuing times.'
The story goes that Wolsey said he'd raise a funeral pyre for her as a witch,
as soon as he reached York. But he never did.
She prophesied that he would see York, but never reach it...
Purportedly....he arrived in Cawood on the outskirts of York,
where he was arrested for treason, and returned to London.
However he fell ill and died in Leicester on Nov 29th 1530.
A lot of these prophecies probably never left her lips. There are dozens
attributed to her, far less cryptic that Nostradamus's.
But she must have had a name for herself as a prophetess
in the first place, in order to have so many books attributing
Spurious prophecies attributed to her in later years....one would imagine.
It was probably because of some physical malformity
that she wss assumed to be a "child of the devil".
This was probably enhanced by the poltergeist activity as an adolescent.
Of course the people of the sixteenth century had never heard
of political correctness.
... continued..
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