A witch? A satanist? Possessed? Gifted? Used of God? Whatever you say, the evidence certainly suggests Mother Shipton was the closest thing to a prophetess that England had for unnumbered generations. Of her lfe we know some, not much. Mother Shipton, sometimes called "the Yorkshire Sybil" was reputedly born Ursula Sontheil (or Southill) in 1488 in Norfolk, England (supposedly in the cave of Knaresborough), and died in 1561, burnt, we are told, at the stake. Her mother Agatha was well known for her exceptional powers. Ursula, too, exhibited prophetic and psychic abilities from an early age. At 24, married to one Toby Shipton, she eventually became known as Mother Shipton. Many of her visions came true within her own lifetime and in subsequent centuries. I first learned of her through an old time holy roller preacher, Bishop Whitlock, in Lewiston, California. But with all the Y2K hoopla, her fame seems enigmatically to be spreading. These rare verses from Mother Shipton seem to have prophetic indications for our times, and while open to interpretation, they show this woman to have been uncannily prescient.
"This was given to Laurent under the Tree in Athens, Georgia by Tim Mills in October, 1944. From an article in the Banner-Herald, Athens, GA Monday, May 23, 1938:
We are in receipt of an alleged prophecy written five hundred years ago by Mother Shipton and vouched for by J.H. Phillips, of Ashdown, Arkansas.
Many of the prophecies have come true and on the suggestion of the owner of the copy of the prophecy, we are giving space to its publication."

A Prophecy from half a millenium ago -
So timely it's almost spooky.
Some people seem to believe the prophetic age passed with the Age of the Apostles (only to return with the Age of Aquarius?) Here is a prophecy written 500 years ago by a woman. Read and see if you can suggest how she could have improved it if she had written it this month. Before reading it, please undertake to transport yourself back across five centuries and live when there were no steamships, no steam railways, no sewing machines, no cook stoves, no radios, no automobiles, no flying machines, no submarines, and none of the many other inventions so common today.
Now, you back there, sitting alone in your quaint old fashioned dwelling, READ this poem AND SEE if you do not think she had a real vision of the future happenings of the world. - J.H. Phillips, Ashdown AR.

[Bob Shepherd notes] Mother Shipton was born in [not Norfolk, but north Yorkshire) England and died in Clifton, Yorkshire, apparently in 1561. If true, her death was by execution -- burnt (as a `Witch`) -- at the stake.

Phillip Coppens attempts to revise (or update a revision or an earlier revision) of the canonical "received" view of the Shipton (witch) story. To separate history from legend is still a daunting task, or even to decipher the whys and hows of so many unexplained (and uncannily accurate) predictions. Were her powers from the devil? Alas, she paid a price, first in ostracism and official threats and persecutions. Those days were still the era of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, the hammer of witches. (more) Inquisitions, both official and otherwise, or sometimes just local zealots ... did not hesitate to burn non-conformists (or even just trouble-maker women) at the stake -- as Mother Shipton apparently learned first-hand. Is there a moral to the story? For one thing, Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History.