Page:Mother Shipton investigated.djvu/49



invented her biography, and gave to the world a new version of her prophecies. This production has been accepted by the popular taste as the authentic history of the Yorkshire witch, and has been reprinted and sold in all parts of the kingdom. Drake, the historian of York, states that Cardinal Wolsey never came nearer to York than Cawood, which makes good a prophecy of Mother Shipton. "I should not have noticed this idle story," he adds, "but that it is fresh in the mouths of our country people at this day; but whether it was a real prediction, or raised after the event, I shall not take upon me to determine. It is more than probable, like all the rest of these kind of tales, the accident gave occasion to the story." (See Eboracum, p. 450, and get date of it). In a History of Knaresborough, published by Harcourt about a hundred years ago, Mother Shipton's traditionary prophecies are described as being still familiar in her native town. The much mutilated sculptured stone near Clifton, Yorkshire, universally called "Mother Shipton," was the figure of a warrior in armour, which had been a recumbent monumental statue; it was probably brought from the neighbouring Abbey of St. Mary, and placed upright as a boundary stone. It has been removed to the museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society.

After clearing palpable fiction out of the way, we are left face to face with three of the earliest editions of Mother Shipton's prophecies, published respectively in 1641, 1645,