User talk:PL

Mother Shipton's Prophecies

Here, for those who doubt it, is (temporarily) an OCR of the 1881 Heywood reprint of the complete text of the original, 1641 edition of Mother Shipton's Prophecies. Please indicate the bit that talks about the end of the world?...

THE PROPHECIES OF

MOTHER SHIPTON

In the raigne of King Henry the Eighth.

FORETELLING THE

DEATH OF CARDINAL WOLSEY, THE

LORD PERCY, AND OTHERS,

As also what should happen in insuing time.

London, printed for Richard Lowndes, I641.

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The Prophecy of Mother Shipton in the Reign of King Henry the Eighth.

WHEN she heard King Henry the Eighth should be King, and Cardinal Wolsey should be at York, 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 Percy, and the Lord Darcy to her, who came with their men, disguised, to the King's house, near York, where, leaving their men, they went to Master Besley to York, and desired him to go with them to Mother Shipton's house, where when they came they knocked at the door, she said come in, Master Besley, and those honour able Lords with you, and Master Besley would have put in the Lords before him, but she said, come in, Master Besley, you know the way, but they do not. This they thought strange that she should know them, and never saw them; then they went into the house, where there was a great fire, and she bade them welcome, calling them all by their names, and sent for some cakes and ale, and they drunk and were very merry. Mother Shipton, said the Duke, if you knew what we come about, you would not make us so welcome, and she said the messenger should not be hanged. Mother Shipton, said the Duke, you said the Cardinal should never see York. Yea, said she, I said he might see York, but never come at it. But, said the Duke, when he comes to York thou shalt be burned. We shall see that, said she, and plucking her handkerchief off her head, she threw it into the fire, and it would not burn; then she took her staff and turned it into the fire, and it would not burn, then she took it and put it on again. Now, said the Duke, what mean you by

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this? If this had burned (said she) I might have burned. Mother Shipton (quoth the Duke) what think you of me? My love, said she, the time will come when you will be as low as I am, and that7s a low one indeed. My Lord Percy said, what say you of me? My Lord (said she) shoe your Horse in the quick, and you shall do well, but your body will be buried in York pavement, and your head shall be stolen from the bar and carried into France. Then, said the Lord Darcy, arid what think you of me? She said, you have made a great gun, shoot it off, for it will do you no good, you are going to war, you will pain many a man, but you will kill none, so they went away. Not long after the Cardinal came to Cawwood, and going to the top of the Tower, he aBked where Y9rk was, and how far it was thither, and said that one had said he should never see York. Nay, said one, she said you might see York, but never come at it. He vowed to burn her when he came to York, and told him it was but eight miles thence ; he said that he will be soon here: but being sent for by the King, he died in the way to London at Leicester of a lask; and Shipton's wife said to Master Besley, yonder is a fine stall built for the Cardinal in Minster, of Gold, Pearl, and King Henry, and he did so. Master Besley seeing these things fall out as she had foretold, desired her to tell him some more of her prophesies. Master, said she, before that Owes Bridge and Trinity Church meet, they shall build on the day, and it shhall fall in the night, until they get the highest stone of Trinity Church, to be the lowest stone of Owes Bridge; then the day will come when the North shall rue it wondrous sore, but the South shall rue it forevermore; when

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Hares kindle on cold hearth stones, and lads shall marry ladies, and bring them home, then shall you have a year of pining hunger, and then a dearth without corn; a woeful day shall be seen in England, a King and Queen, the first coming of the King of Scots shall be at Holgate Town, but he shall not come through the bar, and when the King of the North shall be at London Bridge his tail shall be at Edenborotigh; after this shall water come over Owes Bridge, and a Windmill shall be set on a Tower, and an Elm tree shall lay at every man's door, at that time women shall wear great hats and great bands, and when there is a Lord Mayor at York let him beware of a stab; when two Knights shall fall out in the Castle yard, they shall never be kindly all their lives after ; when all Colton Hagge hath born seven years Crops of corn, seven years after you heard news, there shall two judges go in and out at Mungate bar.

Then Wars shall begin in the Spring, Much woe to England it shall bring : Then shall the Ladies cry well-away, That ever we liv'd to see this day !

Then best for them that have the least, and worst for them that have the most, you shall not know of the War over night, yet you shall have it.in the morning, and when it comes it shall last three years, between Cadron and Aire shall be great warfare, when all the world is as a lost, it shall be called Christ's cross, ,when the battle begins, it shall be where Crookbackt Richard made his fray, they shall say, To warfare for your King for half-a-crown a day, but stir not (she will say) to warfare for your King, on pain on hanging, but stir not, for he that goes to complain, shall not

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come back again. The time will come when England shall tremble and quake for fear of a dead man that shall be heard to speak, then will the Dragon give the Bull a great snap, and when the one is down they will go to London Town; then there will be a great battle between England and Scotland, and they will be pacified for a time, and when they come to Brammammore, they fight and are again pacified for a time, then there will be a great Battle at Knavesmore, and they will be pacified for a while; then there will be a great battle between England and Scotland at Stoknmore; then will Ravens sit on the Cross and drink as much blood of the Nobles as of the Commons; then woe is me, for L~don shall be destroyed for ever after; then there will come a woman with one eye, and she shall tread in many men's blood to the knee, and a man leaning on a staff by her, and she shall say to him, What art thou? and he shall say, I am King of the Scots, and she shall say, Go with me to my house, for there are three Knights, and he will go with her, and stay there three days and three nights, then will England be lost, and they will cry twice a day England is lost; then there will be three Knights in Petergate in York, and the one shall not know of the other; there shall be a child born in Pomfret with three thumbs, and those three Knights will give him three horses to hold, while they win England, and all Noble blood shall be gone but one, and they shall carry him to Sheriff Nutton's Castle, six miles from York, and he shall die there, and they shall choose there an Earl in the field, and hanging their horses on a thorn, and rue the' time that ever they were born, to see so much bloodshed; then they will come to York to besiege

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it, and they shall keep them out three days and three nights, and a penny loaf shall be within the bar at half-a-crown, and without the bar at a penny; and they will swear if they will not yield to blow up the Town walls. Then they will let them in, and they will hang up the Mayor, Sheriffs, and Aldermen, and they will go into Crouch Church, there will three Knights go in, and but one come out again, and he will cause Proclamation to be made, that any may take House, Tower, or Bower for twenty one years, and whilst the world endureth there shall never be warfare again, nor any more Kings or Queens, but the Kingdom shall be governed by three Lords, and then York shall be London; and after this shall be a white Harvest of corn gotten in by women. Then shall be in the North, that one woman shall say unto another, mother, I have seen a man to-day, and for one man there shall be a thousand women; there shall be a man sitting upon St. ~ames Church hill weeping his fill, and after that a ship come sailing up the Thames till it come against London, and the Master of the ship shall weep, and the Mariners shall ask him why he weepeth, being 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 any house that can let us have drink for our money.

Unhappy he that lives to see these days, But happy are the dead Shipton's wife says.

And that's all! --PL (talk) 09:36, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Quick query...

Hi PL,

I notice you reverted my edit regarding Pepys' reference to Nostradamus's exhumation - I'm not complaining about that, it's just given rise to a quick query in my mind. Your reason was that it repeated info in the 'Alternative Views' section. The exhumation mentioned in 'Alternative Views' took place during the French Revolution in the 1780's, whereas Pepys was writing in 1667. The exhumation - and plaque discovery - referred to by Pepys took place (according to him) "60 years after Nostradamus' death", so presumably in the 1620's. Did each exhumation generate a separate story of a plaque/medallion being found bearing the dates? Or has a legend from the 17th century become transposed onto a subsequent 1780's exhumation? Butcherscross (talk) 20:40, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, now that's interesting! The date hadn't clicked with me. Apologies. I would think your last idea is probably right -- though I find it hard to believe that he was actually exhumed at the time, given that the tomb was in a presumably still viable Franciscan chapel. Couldn't we somehow fit your insert in (stressing the date) after the existing reference and linking to it? --PL (talk) 08:41, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, PL! Your edit is great - I've replied more fully under the message you posted on my own talk page! Butcherscross (talk) 23:30, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Sources

Please read WP:RS - you can't use blogs, self-published books (Derwen Press is just a printers, not a publishers, I believe) and sources should discuss the subject of the article. WP:NOR is worth reading also. Dougweller (talk) 17:11, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this, Doug. Derwen Publications (sorry -- got their name wrong!) is indeed a publisher -- their printer is Lightning Source. Re specific complaints made, I would have thought that pointing out that films previously listed are full of misleading suggestions is very much 'the subject of the article'. Meanwhile I notice that the rules say 'largely' in respect of blogs, and would point out that my blogs are designed as semi-permanent web-pages (as suggested by their host), not running blogs. They further state: 'Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications.' My (distinctly sober!) works on prophecy (and particularly apocalyptic prophecy and Nostradamus) have indeed been published by Element, HarperCollins, St Martin's, New Page, Bauer, Elsevier, Piatkus et al under the name 'Peter Lemesurier' (as you can check on Amazon etc.), and I am widely regarded (rightly or otherwise!) as the leading English-language expert on Nostradamus, the alleged theme of the series. So far I don't recollect including any original research. --PL (talk) 09:33, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

No problem, but although Derwen Publications is a publisher (unlike the other company, which does exist), it's still as you know self-published. So if you were challenged, you'd need to go to WP:RSN to justify using it - same applies to personal webpages/blogs. You'd probably succeed, but who knows? More comments below. Dougweller (talk) 15:54, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Of course I could go through it all with a fine-tooth comb, substituting actual published titles for 'blog' references wherever possible, but ironically that would make the research (which, for the most part, is taken from the titles!) less accessible to readers, who would be denied the opportunity to assess it for themselves directly online. (What do you think?)

My '2012' book (not written until 2011) was published via Derwen simply because, with 2012 looming, major publishers felt that there wasn't time for them to grind through their normal production process and sell enough copies against the hundreds of other books on the subject -- and that it would by definition have a short shelf-life! --PL (talk) 16:17, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Oops, forgot original research. Basically anything contentious or that is likely to be challenged should be sourced according to our criteria at WP:RS (and see WP:FRINGE. Hard sometimes for an expert to distinguish what might be challenged I guess. Dougweller (talk) 15:56, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I think I may have anticipated that. A section on 'alternative views' was included in the Nostradamus article, for example, in response to a specific request. The whole thrust of my articles is that, as the rubric puts it, 'an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea': much to the fury of the Nostradamaniacs, they are precisely devoted to what established scholarship (as opposed to popular journalism) reveals. But if anybody wants to question my sources, fair enough. So far they haven't done, by and large... --PL (talk) 16:17, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

I also realised someone should point you to a discussion about your edits at WP:COIN. Dougweller (talk) 17:12, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't previously seen this -- pretty recent, I believe. As I understand it, it is acceptable for recognised experts in the field to include references to their own reputably published works (faute de mieux!). Whether I have overdone it as a recognised author on the 'Nostradams effect', I leave you to judge -- though if you remove them, there might not be much left! I'll take a look at my latest edits to see whether I can suggest more independent sources -- though, alas, not too many books have yet been published refuting the History Channel's suggestions re 2012! Please bear in mind that references to my works are often added by other people. Re the 'Nostradamus effect' page (the most recent one that I have edited), perhaps you would care to undertake any 'thinning out' that you deem necessary?--PL (talk) 09:43, 6 February 2012 (UTC)