I think this opener is following up on one Chelsea did not that long ago.
We're recording a buffer right now, so it's kind of hard to say where it actually falls
into the grand scheme of all the episodes.
Is it British Andy?
No, it was about the avian flu.
And I just saw this article and we're talking about this is why all the chicken and poultry
and egg prices are so high right now is the avian flu.
Well, I found this article to kind of give everybody an update and another side of it
on Reuters.
It came out January 21st, 2023.
It's by Leah Douglas and it is titled High Egg Prices Should Be Investigated, says US
farm groups.
Yeah.
The Federal Trade Commission should examine high egg prices for signs of price gouging
from top egg companies, a farm group said, as Americans continue to pay more than ever
for the household staple.
US regulators, farmers and industry have often argued in recent years about the power of
top agricultural firms set prices and drive up what consumers pay for groceries, such
as when the price of beef skyrocketed in 2021.
The latest concern is eggs, the price of which was up 138% in December from a year prior
before 25 a dozen, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The US Department of Agriculture, USDA, has pointed to a record outbreak of avian flu
as a reason for the high prices.
But the nation's antitrust regulator should also examine record high profits at the top
egg companies, said farm action on Thursday in a letter to FTC Chair Lena Kahn.
CalMain Foods, which controls 20% of the retail egg market, reported quarterly sales up 110%
and gross profits up more than 600% over the same quarter in the prior fiscal year, according
to a late December filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
So these companies that are saying like egg prices are so high because of this, they're
making record profits.
Yeah.
So it's very convenient.
That's nice.
Whereas like it should just be eggs cost more because there's less of them, not because
the company is making more profits.
Yeah.
And then you don't see their profits go up.
Yeah.
The company pointed to a decrease in egg supply nationwide due to avian flu driving up prices
as a reason for its record sales.
The company has had no positive avian flu tests on any of its farms.
The US egg production was about 5% lower in October compared to last year and egg inventories
were down 29% in December compared to the beginning of the year.
The latest USDA data shows.
A significant drop, but one that may not explain record high prices said Basil Mushurbash,
an attorney with farm action.
That is quite the name.
We want the FTC to dig in and see if consumers are being price gouged, said Mushurbash.
The FTC declined to comment.
In a statement, CalMain said that the higher production costs along with avian flu were
contributing to higher prices.
An egg marketing group said in a statement that egg prices reflect a variety of factors
and that wholesale egg prices are beginning to fall.
Nearly 58 million chickens and turkeys have been killed by avian flu or to control the
spread of the virus since the beginning of 2022.
Mostly in March and April, according to the USDA.
Previous largest outbreak in 2015 killed 50.5 million birds.
CalMain shares have fallen in recent weeks after climbing almost 50% last year.
So that's the article.
I just wanted to give another view on why egg prices are so high because a lot of the
times when you see these explanations, someone has behind the scenes kind of paid for that
explanation to happen or markets themselves in the media.
So nobody really wants to talk about the bad things.
Yeah, you got to wonder about with inflation and everything going up as well and how much
of it is companies raising their prices to make more of a profit knowing that inflation
is knowing they have an excuse.
Exactly.
Yeah, you can just say, oh, inflation, another 10%.
Yeah.
And I'm not sure how far that avian flu one is back now, but good.
Yeah.
And we'll keep you posted if there's anything else that we need to on that one.
But I think that's a good place to end that and start the episode.
From the unexplained to the mundane, why don't you come join us on our journey to the fringe?
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, where sometimes the kernel of fringe that
we explore come on the macabre.
We are your clearly clever and hilarious hosts, Taylor and Chelsea, who just made you exhale
slightly heavier out of your nose, whether it be due to humor or cringe.
Anyhow, enough about me.
Let's talk about fringe and fringe.
We shall.
Chelsea has quite the topic for us.
I like to think that that puns involved in this one, but if it's not, oh, well, I just
need to get that pun out there.
And I shall turn it over to you.
OK, the topic this week, I thought would be an interesting subject because I don't know
much about Mother Shipton either.
And I thought it would be fun to find out more about her because I hear her name every
so often.
And every time I hear it, I'm like, that's something I should probably look into one
day.
And today's the day I look into it.
And now I'm going to share it with everybody.
So Mother Shipton, A.K.A Ursula Southale, like the bad octopus in The Little Mermaid,
right?
She was an octopus, right?
I think so.
That makes the most sense.
Yeah.
But because it's half human, half octopus, it's a myrtapus, right?
His myr stands for half human, half whatever comes next.
I thought the maid.
I thought the maid part was the human because like humans are maids.
Oh, myr, maid.
So yeah.
Octo maid.
No, that doesn't sound as good as mermaid.
I thought she was like an octo witch.
Yeah.
Octo witch.
I don't like octa in front of it, but OK, that's not what the episode's about today.
Oh, man.
So why are we talking about Mother Shipton other than what I just said that I wanted to
look into her and bring you guys along for the journey?
Other reasons include because she was a prophetess, a soothsayer, which nobody ever really uses
that word anymore, and was sometimes described as a witch.
Also like Ursula from The Little Mermaid.
Right.
She was a witch.
Yeah.
Or just bad guy.
Octo witch.
Yeah.
She cast like spells and curses.
Or octopus spells.
And traded stuff.
Yeah.
Maybe like, I don't know, a sea genie?
Because like she gave you what you wanted.
Oh, yeah.
A sea genie.
I can see it.
Yeah.
But like with a twist.
I also seem to suit the situation correctly.
We digress again.
Mother Shipton lived in the time of Henry VIII of England and predicted his victory
over France in 1513 in the Battle of the Spurs.
I've also never heard of that.
She also predicted the dissolution of the monasteries.
This is a long time ago, people.
This led to the redistribution of the wealth and land held by the monasteries to the emerging
middle class and the existing noble families.
See how much we're learning already?
It's like a history class.
And I'm teaching it.
That's fucked.
It is true.
It is said that she foretold the fates of several rulers within and just after her lifetime,
as well as the invention of iron ships, the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the defeat
of the Spanish Armada.
By the way, I just looked it up really quick.
She was in fact a sea witch.
Okay, which just completely, completely disregards the fact that she has tentacles.
Yeah, it does.
So I don't know what to think of that.
There has to be a better word for it.
I'll think of it.
It'll come to me in the middle of the night when I can't sleep.
Yeah.
So that's what Mother Shipton in a nutshell predicted.
Now, this isn't a true debate, but just a debate within myself as I was going through
this.
It is a debate amongst people who look into Mother Shipton as to where the predictions
came from.
There are sources that say Mother Shipton didn't write any of her predictions down.
There are others that say she kept a diary and others that say the poems came from scrolls
that were found that she wrote.
All in all, many legends and prophecies accredited to her were created after her death to enhance
the folk legend that she had become.
Her legend was passed on through oral traditions in one of the many variations I read and is
perhaps sometimes embellished a bit.
Since 1641, there have been more than 50 different editions of books about her and her prophecies.
And keep in mind, she's back in the day of 1513.
No, even before that, 1513.
I'll tell you in a minute here.
That's a pretty exact date to get wrong.
You could have just said the 1500s.
She's... we'll get to the exact dates coming up.
Just bear with me here.
The earliest sources of the legends of the Mother Shipton were published starting in
1641-ish by a woman named Joanne Walker, who heard the story as a young girl and transcribed
it as Mother Shipton spoke of her life.
There's a huge gap between her death and any written records of her for about like a hundred
years or so.
And that's less time than Jesus.
So at least there's that.
There's also Samuel Pepe's recorded in his diaries in 1666, whilst surveying the damage
to London caused by the London Fire.
While in the company of the royal family, he heard them discuss the prophecy of the
event told by Mother Shipton.
With that being said, she may have shown up in a letter written by King Henry VIII in
1537.
So while Catholic people were rebelling against the dissolution of Catholic monasteries, Henry
VIII wrote a letter to the Duke of Norfolk where he refers to the Witch of York, which
is strongly believed that this letter is the earliest reference to the real Mother Shipton
who would have been prophesying about Henry VIII at this time.
And there would only be one witch in York.
I mean...
That just seems like a low amount of witches for the time in my book.
It really does because it seemed like they were running rampant at the time.
It's probably more for the yay sayers of Mother Shipton saying that it's more than likely
her.
Her reason's unknown.
She's a very mysterious kind of person as we'll get into.
So this is a lot about her prophecies.
We will get into a lot more about her prophecies.
That's just kind of setting up who she is.
Why are we talking about her?
Why do we want to know about her?
So let's just talk about her origin story.
Mother Shipton was born 1488 so I was off by a little bit.
Not that bad though.
She'd be like 30-ish?
Yeah.
Around the time?
25?
She was alive at the specific year I just said.
In 1488 she was born to 15 year old Agatha Soothail in a cave in North Yorkshire outside
of the town of Nairsboro and died in 1561 at about 72 or 73.
So she lived quite a long life for this time.
These 100 year later peeps that are writing about Mother Shipton after she had died for
a while say that she was born during a violent thunderstorm and was deformed and ugly, born
with a hunchback and bulging eyes.
So just very ugly baby.
Born with that.
Yeah.
That's fun.
Yeah.
Upon being born she did not cry.
She cackled.
I mean what baby doesn't.
And the storm ceased and the smell of sulfur filled the air.
So that's the origin story.
And it is said that her mother Agatha, having been a poor and desolate 15 year old orphan,
had no means to support herself, had fallen under the influences of the devil and engaged
in an affair resulting in the baby Mother Shipton.
Which they refer to as a child.
Okay it's not more likely that she may have worked at a brothel because that's the only
thing that she would be able to do.
No it was the devil.
For sure.
Okay.
Because that's the only-
I mean because that's what people 178 years later are telling us makes sense.
Exactly, it was the devil.
There's no other options you'll see.
Other variations include that Agatha was a witch who summoned the devil to conceive a
child which is still very common to this day.
Not the option Taylor just said for sure because Mother Shipton's different and was fathered
by the devil.
Well absent fathered by the devil.
The devil was never evolved in her life.
No no he was just the genetic part.
Didn't actually father.
Yeah no.
I don't know if I'd expect the devil to stick around.
There's actually a series on Disney Plus right now what's it called.
And it's literally yeah like pretty much a situation where it's written by Dan Harmon.
And he also did Rick and Morty and it's basically and Danny DeVito's in it he plays the devil.
And it's about the hellspawn of Satan who's living on earth who was fathered by a single
mother and she just like became of age and he's trying to parent her now.
This isn't Little Nicky we're talking about is it?
No it's not.
It's called Little- what is it called?
It's still called Little something though?
I think it is.
Okay I have to look this up just because it's bugging me right now.
Yeah it's bothering me also that you don't know the name of it.
Little Demon yeah.
Okay mother shipton story.
Yeah more or less but like modern day.
I'll have to look into that.
Okay so whichever option it was Agatha for real would never disclose who the father was.
In those times that also meant that the two were ostracized from society and they lived
in the same cave Ursula was born in for the first couple years of Ursula's life.
This cave is now known as mother shipton's cave to this day and the cave where she once
lived mother shipton's cave is one of Inglis oldest tourist attractions and for hundreds
of years people have trekked to see the cave where she is born.
It's actually quite a cool cave.
Well I would hope if somebody's living there.
I don't think anyone lives there anymore.
Oh good.
This cave is referred to as a petrifying well and its water has mineral content so high
anything placed in a pool will slowly be covered in layers of stone.
Tourists place items in the pool to later return and see it turn to stone.
Like how later?
That's hard to say.
Like is it a bathroom break or is it like you gotta wait 10 years?
I couldn't imagine long if it was tourists like why would you want to go back 10 years
later.
Oh that would be the marketing gimmick for the town.
Like you gotta come back you gotta come see if that thing turns to stone.
That's information I don't have unfortunately.
If anyone goes please tell us how long to wait until you have to go back because I'm
not even gonna google that.
It's too boring to actually be answered.
Someone report back.
After two years of living in the cave the abbot of Beverly intervened and removed them
from the cave being the devil child and the mother securing the place of Agatha in the
covenant of the Order of St. Bridget in Nottinghamshire and Ursula in a foster family in Nairsboro
and they never saw each other again.
So that's sad.
It is likely Ursula had a large crooked nose and suffered from a hunchback and crooked
legs.
This is synonymous with mothership and that she was just so ugly.
The physical differences acted as a visual reminder of the secretive events of her birth
and the townspeople never forgot about that.
She found acceptance with her foster family and a few friends but Ursula was ultimately
ostracized from the larger portion of people in town.
Weird and unexplained things were also said to have happened around her.
Apparently when she was a toddler she was found cackling in her foster mother's kitchen
alone with pots and pans.
Love to cackle.
Big fan of cackling.
Babies like cackling.
Yeah they do.
Not sure why not every baby is accused of being a devil child but this one's special.
Just a special cackle.
Another much talked about incident including the time a parish meeting was disrupted when
she played tricks on the local men who had been mocking her through the window.
She found sanctuary in the woods from all the ridicule like her mother and had spent
most of her childhood learning of plants and herbs and the medicinal properties of them
and became quite a renowned herbalist in the town where that expanded her circle.
Being a herbalist.
People like that about her.
This expanding of circles led her to meeting Tobias Shipton.
There's some foreshadowing for you.
Not really but you see where this is going.
We're still good at this.
I know.
Foreshadowing is my jam.
It's our forte.
It's right up there with English pronunciations.
Tobias was a carpenter from York and when she was 24 it is said that she had placed
him under a spell in order for him to marry her.
A month after their marriage Ursula helped out a neighbour who had had some items of
clothing stolen from her home.
The following day a woman walking through the town singing I stole my neighbour's
smocking coat I am a thief before handing it over to Shipton and leaving with the curtsy.
So there's that.
Really weird interaction.
I'm not sure if anyone else thought it was weird at the time.
And just so that we are clear we're still talking this is all written down like over
a hundred years after.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Everything is.
Yeah.
Okay.
I just wanted to make sure on that.
Yeah it's like the Bible.
Anyhow.
Tobias died only a few years after they were married before they had any kids so no kids
here.
The grief of losing her husband and the harsh words of the town prompted Ursula Shipton
to move into the woods and they moved to the same cave she had been born in for peace.
There she continued to create potions and herbal remedies for people.
I'm not sure why because...
She seems way too nice for her by treating her.
Yeah.
You guys are assholes.
But here.
Fuck you guys.
I'm just gonna keep making you stuff in the woods.
This is gonna cure your ails.
I'd probably be making poison.
Fuck you.
Nice spit in it.
Here you go.
It still works.
Mother Shipton's name slowly became more and more well known and people would travel far
distances to see her and receive potions and spells.
I wonder if she knew that people were also traveling to see the cave.
Maybe they weren't traveling to see her and get her spells.
They dropped a penny in and they just thought, oh hey, somebody's selling some potions here.
Guess I need to pass the time, however much it is, while I wait for this thing to solidify.
Shipton exhibited prophetic and psychic abilities from an early age and ended up writing her
prophecies, somehow.
As her popularity grew, she grew bolder and revealed she could see the future.
She started by making small prophecies involving her town and the people within and as her
prophecies came true, she began telling prophecies of the monarchy and the future of the world.
So wait, these people, she still has a relationship with the people in town in this story, yet
they tell her she has to live in this cave.
Well, if they didn't tell her to live in the cave, she just kind of retreated back to the
cave.
Okay, because they were treating her like shit.
But yeah, but it seems like the whole town really didn't like her and wasn't very nice
to her.
And you get the feeling when reading the stories is because she's so ugly and also because
she was fathered by the devil.
Yeah, but they don't find that out for like another 150 years.
That's true.
She had no father.
So they also didn't like that, whether it was a devil or not.
But yeah, we'll see.
As with most stories we tell on this podcast, there were a lot of contradictions going on
in her story.
A lot of the problem is that nothing was written down and all the stories come 100 years later.
So yeah, well, how could you like I looked it up the literacy rate in England at the
time was about 11% and they count it literate to be able to sign your name.
Really?
Yeah, that is not good.
Yeah, I'm doing great by those standards though.
So there's that I have going for me.
I have perfect grammar by 15th century English standards.
So it's weird.
You'll find that's a good fact to have because there's a lot of contradictions and it's weird.
Even for if she was writing these things down, it would be like she would have had to be
a genius, I guess.
Yeah, it seems really unlikely that somebody born in a cave to a 15 year old mother who
likely wasn't well off would be literate like that just seems really unlikely.
Yeah, so no, it's full of contradictions.
I mean, but maybe it just genetically came from her dad.
Who knows?
It could have really especially if it was the devil.
I've heard that he has a pretty high IQ.
Yeah, and if he's constantly doing math, yeah, and like writing those contracts.
Yeah, he is.
He needs to stay sharp.
Justin eventually became known as Mother Shipton because of all the people she helped with
the forest flowers and mushrooms and predictions.
She was really on top of her game helping people while everyone was just really busy
by all accounts being assholes to her.
Yes.
Yeah, obviously the mother predictor made her well known around England.
But by the way, everyone goes on about it.
You would think it was because she was ugly and deformed.
So at this point, she's living quite the remarkable life.
I'm surprised there's not like she wasn't inspired by like the Brothers Grimm or something
like that to have a story about her.
They're in Germany.
Yeah, so they probably wouldn't have heard about her.
Yeah.
Fun fact to add right here, because this seems as good a time as any for anyone that may
have been to this place or now wants to add it to their bucket list.
For what reason, I'm not sure you may want to though.
She is associated with the Rollrite Stones of Oxfordshire, which are old ruins and a
complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monuments near the village of Longcompton
on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.
Oh, those are cool stones.
Yeah, they are.
And they're pretty old.
And reportedly a king and his men transformed to stone after failing Mother Shipton's test.
It was a math test, see?
So always be doing math.
Both prove sanity and keeps you decalcified.
Yeah, exactly.
Almost exactly.
I find it interesting I chose to put that in that space in my notes because there is
another space that I talk about stuff like this.
Okay, it's a creative interpretation.
So I'm just gonna leave that there.
There we are.
That's where it lies.
Let's get into some prophecies of Mother Shipton.
Of course, with an asterisk, of some of these may or may not have been predicted because
if, and as we've been going through, and you'll remember, her prophecies were apparently recorded
in a series of diaries that no one's seen the diaries.
It is more than likely that she actually didn't write shit down.
So that's probably the most accurate one.
So now I do have to admit that while I'm quite confused about how the poems came to be, because
on one hand there's a diary no one has seen, and on the other hand it's generally accepted
that there isn't any record of anything being written down relating to Mother Shipton until
like 80 to 100 years after she died.
But I'm not here to pass judgment.
At this point in the podcast, I'm just here to provide you with some beautiful prophetic
poetry and let you know I'm a little confused as to what's going on with Mother Shipton's
records.
There probably isn't any, is what I'm going with.
So let's start with one of Shipton's first local predictions which would have contributed
to her increasing in popularity in the local community as a fortune teller and prediction
maker.
Quote, before Ouse Bridge and Trinity Church meet, what is built in the day shall fall
in the night, till the highest stone in the church be the lowest stone of the bridge.
So let's break it down.
Let's unpack her quote, her poetry.
Not long after Mother Shipton uttered this prophecy did a huge storm fall on York.
During the storm, the steeple of the top of Trinity Church fell and a portion of the Ouse
Bridge was destroyed and swept away by the river.
Later when making repairs to the bridge, pieces that had previously been the steeple of the
church were used as the foundation of the new section of the bridge, effectively making
Trinity Church and the Ouse Bridge what was built in the day and fell in the night.
And the steeple from Trinity Church, the highest stone, be the foundation of the bridge, the
lowest stone of the bridge.
It came true.
By all accounts of what I'm writing to you right here.
It's true and she predicted.
So the event happened, the statement nobody knows.
The poetry, maybe?
The event did happen, yes.
When she predicted it, who's to say?
Really.
Next one.
A print.
I at least like that they said she said it.
Like she didn't write that one down.
Yeah.
So it actually, it clears at least the eye test of what she might have been able to do.
Yeah.
Now here's the thing that I also have issue with.
Like why is this in poetry?
Like I know a lot of this exists on local legend and people retelling the stories and
everything.
Maybe poetry sticks in people's mind more because it rhymes.
It's like a song you get stuck in your head maybe.
Yeah.
That's what Nostradamus was all about.
Yeah.
The mysticism and like the poems.
And you would think that maybe I would look up the times he was making predictions.
When is he from?
I think he's a hundred years before that.
Like 1400s.
His were written down 1503 to 1500.
Oh no, it's exactly this time.
It's the same time.
But he wrote it down.
So he must've been a genius.
So it might've been just the style at the time to put prophecies into poetry.
But if she can't write, which we make, you make a good point.
She probably was illiterate.
I would be very curious to see maybe just do an episode on rhyming prophets.
People also ask what they're looking up.
Nostradamus.
Does Nostradamus marry?
What a question.
My favorite thing is popular Google questions because people are fucking idiots.
They Google the most fucked up things.
They sure do.
Okay.
Next prophecy.
You may have heard this one.
This one I've heard as well and I never associated it to Mother Shipton, but she's the one that
said it?
Question mark?
A prince that never shall be born shall make the shaved heads forlorn.
This one is said to be about Edward VI, commonly believed to be born my c-section and the shaved
heads forlorn is a reference to making England into a more Protestant nation.
There are-
Okay.
Yeah.
I don't want to go out the history of those religions to really shed light on that.
This history is something that is- most history is I'm not a history buff at all.
So let's just believe Mother Shipton's predictions, okay?
You know what?
We just need to find somebody who's really obscure in a culture that not many people
know and just say, yeah, they said this.
And they're like, did it come true?
Yeah.
Are you going to look into it?
No.
There you go.
And so we're all learning history here.
You learned it here on Journey to the Fringe as you learn most of your knowledge.
That's a true statement.
That's why we have such smart listeners.
Wasn't an opener.
That is why we have such smart open- no, not openers.
Listeners, listeners.
And-
No, yeah, one's a byproduct of the other.
The openers are very good.
There are also a lot of predictions about Henry VIII, who was very popular at the time,
I hear, because of all of these predictions that I've read.
So the first one is, when the cow doth ride the bull, then, priest, beware the skull.
And when the lower shrubs do fall, the great trees quickly follow shall.
The mitered peacock's lofty cry shall to his master be a guide, and one great court to
pass shall bring what was never done by any king.
Where shall grieve to see the day, and who did feast must fast and pray?
Eight so decreed their overthrow, riches brought pride, and pride brought woe.
When the cow doth ride the bull, then, priest, beware the skull.
So often when Mother Shipton would have visions of specific people, she wouldn't see faces
or names, but their family heraldry.
The cow mentioned represents the heraldry of Henry VIII, and the bull similarly represents
Anne Boilin.
Mother Shipton is making the beginning of her prophecy to the marriage of King Henry
VIII and Anne Boilin.
Once they are wed, the priests need to beware.
This is because their marriage marks the beginning of the dissolution of the monasteries.
Apparently that's a huge thing.
Where King Henry VIII…
Yeah, that one is.
Yeah.
That's because he wasn't allowed to legally divorce Anne Boilin, despite… because he
wanted to divorce her because he didn't get a son from her.
And the Catholic Church said, nope, you can't divorce her.
And he said, well, I'm making my own church then.
And he started the Church of England.
Ah, right.
So he demobilized all monasteries, priories, and covenants in England, which is…
Taylor did know the history.
Any priests, he lied.
Apparently I did know it.
I never really think of the Church of England as Protestant, but I do know that part.
Both religious and secular lost their lives, suppressing against the laws made to limit
the Catholic Church's power.
Another quote, the miltered peacock's law shall cry to his master be a guide.
That was actually from the quote that I just read there.
To go into that, in the late 15th century and early 16th century England, King Henry
VIII was not the controlling force behind all policies and matters of state.
The man who was in control of matters of the state was King's chief advisor Thomas Wolsey.
Wolsey was the son of a butcher who rose up and became Chancellor and then a Cardinal
in the Catholic Church.
He was the King's chief advisor and a control and figure in all matters of the state and
Henry VIII's policies.
Wolsey was even often depicted as an alter-rex… what?
Another king.
Kind of like T-rex, but alter and meaning king.
Oh yeah, rex means king in Latin.
Regina means queen.
That's why if you look at court documents usually it says RV.
The R stands for Rex or Regina.
Oh.
Depending on who's in power.
Look at all the stuff we're learning here.
I'm telling, you guys are learning.
Because his influence was so absolute in both political and religious spheres.
In her prophecy, Mother Shipton refers to him as a mitered peacock, as he came from
the lowly state of being the son of a butcher to controlling and guiding King Henry VIII
in all his policies for England.
So then we move on to, and one great court to pass shall bring what was never done by
any king.
This portion of the prophecy refers to King Henry VIII seizing power from the Catholic
Church in his creation of the Church of England, which had never been done by any king before.
And then, the poor shall grieve to see the day, and who did feast must fast and pray,
eat so to creed their overthrow riches brought pride, and pride brought woe.
King Henry VIII wanted to take control of all the land and property owned by the monasteries
in order to enrich himself.
He did this by forcing the monasteries to surrender all their property and then he dissolved
or abolished the monasteries and expelled the monks.
The poor were ultimately the ones that suffered because the monasteries had been the source
of most charity and fed and gave alms to the poor.
With the monasteries all abolished, all the former funds used for charity went into the
king's treasury instead of being used to help the poor.
I mean, they're giving a very lax description of how the church used its money.
Yeah, I mean...
Like all the money just went to charity?
Yeah, that's not how the church has ever worked.
Yeah, but of course they do.
Mother Shipton then says this fall of the church was inevitable.
As the church became more wealthy, they became more prideful.
Their lack of humility...
But they gave it all to charity!
Exactly!
Their lack of humility had ultimately led to their downfall.
And there's no poem for this, I'm sorry, other than the one I just read.
It wasn't pride that led to their downfall.
It was the fact they wouldn't let the king divorce because he had no religious grounds.
So if nothing, Mother Shipton's poem has just opened up this nice little dialogue for us
to learn about King Henry VIII and a little bit of 15th century England history for us
to chew on for a little bit.
Which is nice.
Who doesn't like that every so often?
This is the first time in my life, to be honest, that I'm talking about this.
I'm pretty sure about that.
So then there is also King...
No, not King.
I just ad-libbed that right there.
There's also Elizabeth the First Reformation.
We quote, a maiden queen shall reign anon, the papal powers shall bear no sway, Rome's
creed shall hence be swept away.
That one's straightforward.
Yeah, it's straightforward.
Then there's the broken ships of the Spanish Armada off the English and Irish coast.
Quote, the Western monarch's wooden horses shall be destroyed by Drake's forces.
You'll notice I said Mother Shipton didn't name names in her quotes, and this one specifically
names a historical figure.
So this one might be a made up prediction by a biographer.
Little red flag on that one.
And it made it into the prediction portion, so he cannot be held accountable.
Then there is Mary Queen of Scots execution.
Quote, a widowed queen in England shall be headless seen.
Straightforward again, very straightforward on that one.
Then the punishment of Essex for his rebellion.
Quote, an earl without a head be found.
Impressive predictions about people being beheaded.
And the ascension of the Scottish King James VI to the throne of Westminster.
Quote, soon after shall the English rose unto a male her place disposed.
And then there's the Great Fire of London in 1666.
Mother Shipton having supposedly claimed that, quote, it comes against London.
What a good city this was.
None of the world comparable to it.
And now there's scare a house left.
That one has a different feel to it as well.
That one's really straightforward.
It is really straightforward.
It's almost like someone completely different wrote that one.
Or on a game of telephone, you know how telephone worked.
They just got a person who completely misunderstood at the end.
But they wouldn't because telephones didn't exist.
Oh, I guess they couldn't play that game.
It can't happen.
That's the closest we know it to though.
So then there are the end times predictions.
Of course, you can't be a witch predictor soothsayer without end time predictions, obviously.
This one is probably one of the most notable by Shipton.
Tell me if you've ever heard this.
You might not have.
The world to end shall come in 1881.
That's from Mother Shipton.
I have not, no.
Let's talk about it.
You'll notice this one is not in 16th century English.
Someone dropped a ball.
No, it's incredibly straightforward.
Perhaps a...
I don't feel like there's any allegories going on.
Yeah, none at all.
This version was not published until 1862.
And more than a decade later, its true author Charles Hindley admitted in print that he
had created the manuscript.
This fictional prophecy was published over the years with different dates and in or about
several countries.
The booklet The Life and Prophecies of Ursula Sondthale, better known as Mother Shipton,
predicted the world would end in 1991.
Also in the late 70s...
1881?
1991.
Okay, so this is a different prediction.
No, it's just somebody that made this up in the first place and it just kept...
Moving back.
Yeah, it just kept moving with the times.
That's how they go.
Yeah.
And in the late 70s, many news articles were published about Mother Shipton and her prophecy
that the world would end in 1981.
So they all rhyme and end in one.
So...
Yeah, they're all fairly symmetrical choices.
1881, 1991, 1981.
Those are the options.
And none of them happened.
Among other well-known lines from Hindley's fictional version, often quoted as if they
were original, are,
A carriage without a horse shall go, disaster fill the world with...
These are fairly straightforward.
In water, iron then shall float, as easy as a wooden boat.
To summarize, Mother Shipton did not predict any end times from those quotes.
There is a biographer as well that admitted to making stuff up about her life as well.
Some scholars have argued that she is complete fiction and that many of her prophecies were
composed by others after her death.
There are those, however, that argue that she was in some way an actual person, embellished
through local...
In some way.
Embellished through local tradition in a folk legend.
Which I mean, that happens.
I probably think it's that, more than anything.
I mean, she's born in a cave.
I mean, that is the things of local legend.
And there is at least one clue earlier than the 17th century which indicates that the
prophetess may be based in more than pure invention.
In 1537, as Catholic rebels in Yorkshire rebelled against Henry VIII, which we talked about
one of the first things I talked about, and his dissolution of the monasteries, the Assyl
king wrote a letter to the Duke of Norfolk in which he disdainfully refers to the Witch
of York.
They do really believe that this is referencing the real Mother Shipton.
You do bring up a good point.
There probably were a lot of people accusing others of being witches around the time.
I would also wonder, because it is with regards to talking about religious groups, if it's
a way of backhandedly speaking about your enemies, like the witch there, which would
be just like, that's the Catholic group.
Not having seen the actual letter, I can't tell you how they're interpretation of how
witches are used.
Especially when I'm reading this all in regards to Mother Shipton, there's always the confirmation
bias where you're using it to make your point that it is about the real Mother Shipton.
And that's what Mother Shipton people say that they think it is more than likely about
the real Mother Shipton.
So there's also the part that predictions made to come true are sometimes used as a
form of propaganda by governments or other institutions by means of saying, oh, look,
this was predicted by Mother Shipton and it's come true.
So people are just more apt to accept what's happening to them.
So by making up these predictions, people are like more easily able to accept things
that are happening because it was prophesied about.
With all that being said, Mother Shipton has a rather large legacy in England.
She accumulated considerable folklore, if you can't tell.
Her name became associated with many tragic events and strange goings on, according in
the UK.
North America and Australia throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Many fortune tellers used her effigy and statue presumably for the purpose of association
marketing.
Many pubs were named after her.
Many too survived, one near her birthplace in Nairsborough and the other in Portsmouth,
where there is a life-size statue above the door.
Are either in a cave.
No, but there is the Mother Shipton cave where she was born.
Okay.
I do also like to think that her persona lives on and how like the physical look of witches
on TV and movies carries on with like hunchback and physical deformities.
You're very right.
There's actually nothing in that, but it's very true.
And I'm going to post hopefully some pictures on the socials and it is very much stereotypical
with.
That's kind of where it comes from in my mind.
Because outside of that, I know that I've done much research into it, but I don't think
like the idea of witches being deformed comes from anything.
I wouldn't think so.
Not with that timeframe.
That makes complete sense.
A caricature of Mother Shipton was used in early Pantomimes and is believed by historians
to be the forerunner of the Panto Dame, whatever that means.
I don't have time to look into everything.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
I know.
We have such a curious mind.
We say the questions we had and say, I'm too lazy.
I can't just gloss over that.
I have to tell you.
She also has a moth named after her.
The Mother Shipton moth seemingly bears a profile of a Higgs head on each wing.
Very special to have a moth named after you.
A fundraising campaign was started in 2013 to raise 35,000 pounds to erect a statue of
Mother Shipton in Narsborough.
Completed in August 2017, the statue sits on a bench in the town's Market Square, close
to the statue of John Metcalfe, who knows who that is, an 18th century road engineer
known as Blind Jack.
There you go.
It was in there.
Lucky me.
Let's also not forget Mother Shipton's cave.
There's also a statue in her cave.
So if you really wanted to go around York, you can make a whole day of visiting all the
Mother Shipton things, which might be fun, but that's Mother Shipton and her legacy.
Speechless, I know.
Yes.
I finally done it.
I always like when we end an episode off with, by the way, this person might not actually
have ever existed.
Yeah.
As it happens fairly often.
There's a good chance they didn't exist.
As it happens fairly often when I go, you know what?
I'm finally going to do it.
I'm going to look into this for a topic because I've heard so much about this person, but
it's just been like here and there.
I don't know much.
And then I look into it and I'm like, hmm.
That left me rather disappointed.
That's kind of underwhelming.
Yeah.
So I learned a lot of history about England, which is just like a few sporadic random history
facts that won't really stick in my head or give me any actual knowledge of anything.
And then I was left kind of unfulfilled, but I couldn't not tell the story because what
if somebody else out there wanted to know about Mother Shipton and they rely on us for
this information.
And now I've done my due diligence, I guess.
Yeah.
And we did cover it and they say, I guess it's just a definitely interesting person
that existed.
I'll move on with that one.
Journey to the fringe won't even touch.
Shame on them.
Yeah, because it's too interesting.
Well, shit.
Journey to the fringe, we damper down expectations.
Interesting or not, we will cover it.
And we will make it uninteresting.
Took us so long to get to that mission statement.
Almost over 100 episodes.
Yeah.
So that's where we're leaving that.
Yeah.
And I do, I am curious now that we have talked about it and we might touch it again in the
future about that whole rhyming thing.
Was that just like how you made things sound more like official, they're mystics?
And why did that come about?
Yeah, I guess we'll have to leave that for another episode unless we need to show this
and you want to hear us talk about what we know.
We have lots of time.
No, we can edit here.
Chelsea, thank you very much for mothership.
What a story.
Yes, the original mother.
That's what she is known for.
Anyhow I have been Taylor here with Chelsea.
We are Journey to the Fringe.
Thank you all for listening.
We'll see you next week.
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