Did Mother Shipton Predict the Internet?

in North Yorkshire, England. There are a few interesting things about this area. It is said to have inspired Weathering Heights. There are also rumors of hobgoblins living in the North York Moors, and it's famous for its story about four nights Hugh de Morville, Reginald Fitzer's, William de Tracy and Richard Lebrette, who am assassins when they murdered a man named Thomas Beckett. Beckett was the Archbishop of Canterbury and the men were under the impression they were carrying out

King Henry the Second's orders. Guilty, they fled to Naresborough Castle, where their self imposed imprisonment is said to have lasted a year, and that's important because it said that they just might be the most notorious persons of Nearesborough, but that also might not be true. The village is also known for its notorious witch, a woman named Ursula Southeal.

Ursula was born in or about four It was believed by locals that she was the child of the union between a fifteen year old orphaned girl named Agatha south El and the devil. Agatha never did reveal who the actual father was, even when she was forced to appear in front of the local magistrate. Legend has it that she delivered Ursula during a violent thunderstorm in a cave on the bank of the river in Narborough. Some accounts among the villagers said that the baby cackle instead of

crying at birth. Agatha, as we just said, was just a teenager without any family to support her and this newborn infant, and the villagers believing that she was in league with the devil. Certainly we're not stepping up to offer assistance. For two years, Agatha raised her daughter in the cave that she gave birth in, until the Abbot of Beverly finally intervened. Ursula was taken in as a foster child by a local family. Agatha was placed in the convent of the Order of St. Bridget, where she

remained until her death. The mother and daughter never saw each other again. Ursula was considered an unusual kid, both in how she looked and in her nature, and she usually stuck close to home because of that. A lot is written of her appearance, and we'll also have a lot to say about that as well. It was written that she had a large and crooked nose, a large head, sunken cheeks, a bent back or maybe a hunchback, and

that her legs were twisted. The locals described her as having glowing eyes and that she had been born with a full set of teeth. They called her by cruel nicknames such as hag Face and Devil's Bastard. Unfortunately, hag Face did kind of stick. When the teasing and mockery from the local villagers became too much to bear, Ursula spent her time in the forest near the cave that had once been her home, studying flowers and herbs and

how to make remedies and potions with them. When Ursula was twenty four years old, so this would put Us in the early fifteen hundreds, now right around fifteen twelve, if that year of birth is correct, she met a man named Tobias shipped In. Tobias or Toby, as some sources referred to him, was a carpenter and he was originally from the city of York, and the two married, but Toby died just a few years in to the marriage.

We do not know the circumstances surrounding this loss. It said that this pair had a really happy and comfortable marriage, and that Toby supported Ursula's special gifts he was proud of his wife. After his death, Ursula kept the name shipped In, and she became popularly known as Mother Shipton as she aged. When they married, locals thought she must have bewitched Toby with love potions because Ursula was not considered a good catch, and when he died they whispered

that she must have killed him. On that irritating note, We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and when we return we will get more into whether or not Ursula was a reputable oracle. Welcome back to Criminalia. This is the time in her story when Ursula begins to predict the future. In addition to cultivating herbs and providing remedies and minor spells. Ursula, it turned out, had a gift. In addition to the healing

that she had been practicing all those years. It is said that she became what's known in English lore as a soothsayer. She was able to predict the future, and she became known as nares Borough's Prophetess. Ursula began with small premonitions, but with growing confidence, she became perhaps the greatest fortune teller in England's history, and maybe of all time anywhere, depending on who you ask. Just don't ask Nostrodamus, because she would not have been in his premonitions, because

the two of them were contemporaries. Once Ursula became a confident clairvoyant, it was a big deal to the locals, and that's because she was surprisingly or at least allegedly surprisingly accurate. At least she was accurate according to her lore, and allegedly she foretold some pretty big events. For example, she predicted the Great Fire of London, which happened in sixteen sixty six, that's roughly one years after Ursula's death. One of her premonitions about this was the following quote.

A time shall happen when a ship shall come sailing up the Thames till it come against London, and the master of the ship shall weep, And the mariners of the ship shall ask him why he weeps, since he hath made so good a voyage, And he shall say, ah, what a goodly city. This was none in the world comparable to it. And now there is scarce left, and the house that can let us have a drink for

our money. She allegedly predicted the defeat of Spain's so called invincible Armada by an English naval force in eight and she allegedly predicted the fates of some among the royal and aristocratic families, including the execution of Mary, Queen of Scott's. She allegedly predicted when the bubonic plague would erupt in London as well. So here's something funny. We have read speculation that Shipton also predicted the Internet when she said quote, around the world, men's thoughts will fly

quick as the twinkling of an eye. But of course, come on, that's not true. We all know, uh. Former Vice President Al Gore created the Internet. True? Okay, okay, Okay, We're don't say that, Brianno. We're kidding. Perhaps Ursula did foresee the now fairly famous computer scientist Robert Kahn, Vince Surf, and Tim Burners Lee changing the way humanity interacts through technology. Seems unlikely she would have comprehended if she had such a vision, but we will never know, And that's really

the tricky part of her legacy. All of her predictions were matters of interpretation, and in most of those cases they don't really make sense until after the fact, when you can look back and kind of work out how something she said could be applicable to an event that

had taken place. Right. That's like the key to all of our historical soothsayers is going, wait, this kind of does describe a thing that happened later, But that's because we have hindsight really loosely describes what happened, right, And we've read a lot of things associated with her premonitions. Actually, there are people that will say she predicted the arrival of cars on the scene, and even aviation from the reign of King James the First and the rise of

Queen Elizabeth, all kinds of things. The steam engine makes the list. It's hard to know what she did or did not foresee, but it is also very fun to indulge a bit and imagine her prophecies being real. She foretold of national and international events, and as people began to believe that she had in fact been predicting the future, suddenly the spotlight turned to the shunned woman the locals new as hag Face. Perhaps her best known prophecy was

local and was regarding the Cardinal Wolsey. The Cardinal had never actually visited York. He had spent all of his time involved with the ongoings in London, but due to unrest in the city, he finally planned his trip in fifte Mother Shipton's name appears in a pamphlet from sixteen forty one, which is of course a bit after her life, but it is also one of the earliest surviving records we have of her. That pamphlet called the Prophecy of Mother Shipton in the Reign of King Henry the Eighth.

It describes the prophecy made by Mother Shipton about English statesman and one of the chief advisors to King Henry the Eighth, the Cardinal Thomas Woolsey, Ursula, in regard to his upcoming visitation, foretold the Cardinal would see York, but that they had never actually set foot there, and the Cardinal didn't officially accuse her of treason for the vision

she spoke of. But the pamphlet also describes how he dispatched three men to issue this warning to Ursula, and we quote she said that Cardinal Wolsey should never come to York with the King, and the Cardinal, hearing, being angry, sent the Duke of Suffolk, the Lord Piercy, and the Lord Darcy to her that prophecy. Well, it came to pass Wolsey, approaching York and close enough to see the city,

did not make it there. King Henry the Eighth recalled the Cardinal to London, and then he died during the return trip. It didn't end there between Henry the Eighth and Ursula. In fifteen thirty seven, the King, who had been repeatedly named in Ursula's prophecies, wrote a letter to the Duke of Norfolk in which he mentions a quote which of York, which experts believe is likely a reference to Ursula. We're going to take a break here from

a word from our sponsor. And when we're back, we will talk about why some scholars actually think Mother Shipton is fictional. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about why some of Mother's Shipton's prophecies are probably not hers. Mother Shipton, as you may have been thinking based on our descriptions earlier, kind of became the stereotype for today's disfigured bad complexion, which but the evidence evidence, such as portraits of her,

suggests that that description might be pretty exaggerated. Holly's right, this really may have been the case. A woodcut and a few portraits that we've seen of her illustrate Ursula as a very plain tutor woman, but she has not seen with what we can that are, which like attributes the stereotypical visible warts and a hooked nose. She kind of looks a lot like a tired grandmother. Fabulous, She looks like someone you'd love to sit and have teas.

I mean, it's really not until pamphlets that were produced after sixteen forty one where we start to see Ursula turn into what we would consider a caricature or a

stereotype of a witch. Warts and all in the strange and wonderful History of Mother Shipton of six, Ursula was described as quote long but very big boned, great goggling eyes, very sharp and fiery, a nose of unproportionable length, having in it many crooks and turnings, adorned with great pimples, which, like vapors of brimstone, gave such a luster in the night that her nurse needed no other candle to dress her by. I hope someone describes me that colorful one day.

In sixteen sixty seven, novelist Richard had published The Life and Death of Mother Ship Din, which was full of descriptions and illustrations of Ursula, in which she appeared haggard and possibly as a woman living with some kind of physical disability. Other descriptions really went all out and included details about her having bore like tusks where her teeth

should be get in mind. So those writings were composed more than a century after her death, They were not written by anyone who knew her personally, and they do seem a little bit light on the fact checking, but they did cement, in many ways the prototype of what a witch in Western culture looked like. These descriptions are awfully close to the graphics we still see today on

Halloween decorations and Nathan in cartoons. By seventeen hundred, when the witchcraft fever that had spread across England began to subside, descriptions and illustrations of Mothership in his appearance also began to be toned down. Her nose was softened and those swarts and pimples were removed. Drawings of her began to show her with scrolls rather than with the witches familiar.

She started to be referred to as a prophetess. Ursula, unlike most, if not all, of the witches we've talked about so far this season, was not burned at the stake, as a witch's execution would have been normad a sword or however many execution styles you can think of. Persula died of natural causes, but because she was believed to possess supernatural powers, she was buried outside of the boundaries

of York on holy ground. In one when she passed away, a stone was erected about a mile from the city of York, from which the following quote is taken. Here lies she who never lied, whose skill often has been tried. Her prophecies shall still survive and ever keep her name alive. The details of earth life are centuries old and are really surely speculative. Her appearance, at least mostly is surely conjecture, but the predictions that have been attributed to her were

widely accepted as reliable at the time. Some scholars have argued that Mother Shipton is fictional. Why well, mainly because there are many differing versions of her prophecies, different prophecies and from differing years. The first publication of her prophecies doesn't even appear until sixteen forty one, so that's eighty years after what we think is the date of her death.

It contains mostly local and regional predictions. You're not going to find the premonition of the Black death in that one. Another version, printed in eighteen sixty two, was edited by a man named Charles Hindley, who later admitted that he had extended the book with his own writings and had tried to make them say own as though they did belong to Ursula. Ursula did not actually predict that the world was going to end in eight eight one. That was Charles's work, But not everyone feels she was a

work of fiction. Many argue she was a real person, but that her story was likely embellished through local tradition, turning her into a folk legend over the years. According to historian Arnold Kellett in his study Mothership Didn't Which in Prophetess, the pamphlet, although published after her death, is and I'll quote him, historically convincing that Ursula was a

real person. And that's because he continues, if she was at work of fiction, the story of her prophecies would surely have been more sensational and mythical than what they actually were. It's an interesting It is an interesting take because in many instances I feel that he might be right, whether she was fictional, real, or something in between. Ursula's name has very much been kept alive, and in some surprising ways. First, there is a moth named for the

alleged appearance of her profile on its wings. Its scientific name is Cali's Tea May, but it's known as the mother shipt in moth that was classified by Swedish entomologist Carl Alexander Clerk in seventeen fifty nine. And Second, today, Naresborough is famous for its mineral springs and spots. It's also famous for introducing the world to pause for a second bed racing with Great Narrasboro Bed Race, where teams run and swim a really difficult about two and a

half mile course while carrying beds and passengers. It's also famous for the cave where Ursula is said to have been born. That cave is now called Mother Shipton's Cave and it's one of England's oldest tourist attractions. A place called the Petrifying Well is also nearby the cave, and it was believed during Ursula's lifetime could turn things into and I mean quote this stone. So about that stone.

What's really going on here in this well has to do with the wells unusually high mineral content that can make an object appear to be stone, like if you soak it in that water for a few months. But to Ursula's contemporaries, it sure did look like stone. So together today the cave and the well now have a gift shop, a picnic area and other attractions associated with it and Mother Shipton. I'm ready to book a trip.

I know, I hear. It's lovely. I think it was really great that we did not end a story with an execution. So let's toast to that. What do you have for us today? Yeah, come over and stamp by the cauldron. I'm brewing a thing. I cannot tell you exactly why I wanted to name it what I named it, but I really just this is the only thing that kept coming to mind, and it made me laugh so hard that I was like, that's that's it. It's called hag juice. Just hag juice. You want to mix up

about of juice? This one is actually a drink that I think any of our listeners who like things a little less sweet might enjoy. I know my proclivity with a lot of my drinks is to essentially make cake and a glass like I tend to go very much towards the sweet side of the spectrum, and I wanted to make something that's called juice but is not what we would think of when we think of with juice, which is like high fruit content and a lot of sugar.

It's not like that at all. I appreciate this because I tend to not like a real sugary, fruity drink, So right, you might love this. And I also was just trying to think about ingredients that one would associate with, you know, predictions and soothsaying, and one of them. This is a thing. It literally is just me taking the most literal association of two words together because I thought about sage and like that coming with a sense of wisdom.

And then I thought, ha ha, what if I do a twist on a mohedo where we don't use mint and we use sage instead. Isn't that interesting? I was in direction. I was not expecting that we were going to go again. Please continue right listen, hag juice is full of surprises, as it should be, and there is something kind of fabulous that happens here. What's I'll described and it it ended up being very perfect for what I was going for. So this is super simple. It's

it's like a mohedo. There are some ingredients that are shifted a little bit. So you're going to take several sage leaves. Mine were quite large, so I used like three largely eaves. If you're are smaller, just add some more. You can't get a wrong number in there. Tear them up a little, throw them in your your cocktail shaker with three quarters of an ounce of simple syrup. Give that a little muddle you know, press it, press those leaves so they release that beautiful sage scent um their oils,

and then throw in some ice. You're gonna add three quarters of an ounce of lemon juice, one and a half ounces of a very dark rum, not necessarily a spice rump, but just a very dark rum, which usually do have some spice, and then you're gonna shake that with ice, and I mean you're gonna shake it because you really want to get that sage all up in that rum's business, like you really want to like make

them together. And then you will strain that over fresh ice and top it with club soda and garnish it with a sprig of sage um. I will tell you. So there's some obvious shifts from a regular mohedo other than the mint. Normally a mohedo would use lime juice. Did this with lime juice, no bueno. It was like it was having a fight in my mouth. It was not cool. It was just too many sharp flavors. And the lemon just played way better with the sage. And usually you would use a clear rum for a mohito

and not a dark rum. Because what happens is this does kind of look a little dirty, like it's got kind of a brownish color. It's not it's not like a bright looking drink, like even though it's fine. I mean, it doesn't look scary. It just looks it's a dark, cloudy, kind of muddy looking drink in the cauldron. It's in the cauldron. This is what drinks in the cauldron for. I don't wash the cauldron every time. It's the secret

to great flavor. What are you retired Navy? So the thing that becomes really interesting, and it's one of the reasons that the lemon juice worked better than the lime juice is that it tastes interesting, but the taste is very light, and it's like all of those flavors merge in such a way where none of them is really the dominant tone. You just kind of get this bright, clear flavor, which to me was kind of wonderful because then you associate that with the clarity one would need

to have visions of the future. It's a really surprising and interesting sip. I liked it quite a bit, I must confess. Even though it does not take tastes like cake in a glans, it has an herb in it. There's something green in my drink. I'm okay with greenery in a in a bivage, but I had not muddled. I had not muddled sage before this, so that was kind of fun. And the thing is too, if you like a stiffer drink, this is really easy to um

to bump it up. You literally just go from three quarters of announce on the simple syrup in the limit juice to an ounce apiece, go from one and a half ounces of rump to two. You're basically just doing a two part one part situation and you'll keep that same balance in proportion that way. Again, drink responsibly. Don't go much higher than that then just getting silly. If you want to do a mock tail version of this, the only thing you need to sub out is that rum.

There are a few options you can go with here. You could do that with a soda, but you obviously don't want to shake it. Like a dark cola works great in that taste a little bit different obviously because there is then a much sweeter profile to it. You can also do like a um An herbal tea that has a lot of depth to it. I don't know that I would do a black tea. I would do something else like that's interesting, like even a red maybe in there or something. But other than that, it's it's

the same stuff. A little sage in your in your drink is always fun. I hope if you make this you enjoy it and you have clarity and see the future and that it's beautiful, that it is not if it's if it's it's not that maybe don't tell me, but we don't tweet about that part. You don't. We don't share those bad visions. No, hopefully you just have visions of deliciousness. Who doesn't want that. We will be right back here next week with another visit to the Cauldron,

and we hope you will join us. Thanks so much. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.