Talk:Mother Shipton

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 September 2020 and 12 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Amanda Reece.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:30, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
I really don't think the long poem is needed, among other things with this article. The external links are borderline spam. 205.157.110.11 22:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the verse is a pretty crucial inclusuion, given that it's far and away the Shipton "prophecy" that's the most frequently quoted. And I don't see how links to informative websites about the subject are "borderline spam" either. --Centauri 00:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

LOL, the poem is so incredible that you do not want to post it because it triggers your control programming. Either that or you are a paid disinfo agent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.162.4.7 (talk) 23:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Punch
The connection made in this image is by Harrison 1881, if anyone fancies working that into the article. cygnis insignis 17:40, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Dates
Why is the long quote from her "prophecies" stated to be "published in 1448", when in fact, as previously stated, these well-known predictions are considered to be much later forgeries. Is that because they were originally claimed to have been published then? Either way, it seems a bit confusing. Orlando098 (talk) 09:28, 17 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Doesn't it just?! I've reformatted the quote to make it clearer. Does it make better sense now, in your view? --PL (talk) 16:24, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

How is the moth named after her? Translate the Latin name!
>Quoting the article: " There is a moth, Callistege mi, named after her. It seemingly bears a profile of a hag's head on each wing." <

> How is it named after her? Explain that! I see nothing of her name in the above Linnean binomial. I see the hag's head in the photograph--related to the description of her appearance as ugly. But we need an English translation of the Latin name of the moth, if indeed it has anything to do with Mother Shipton. <

>Thank you. -r < 69.166.29.43 (talk) 13:57, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

NPOV discussion
The overall tone of this page is very credulous about Shipton's prophecies and makes many claims (even supern/atural ones) without sources.

Although the page's intoduction mentions that the first publication of her prophecies "contained numerous mainly regional predictions and only two prophetic verses", much of the article presents prohecies as fact, giving specific explanations for these prophecies. It does not even make it clear that these prophecies were actually made by Shipton. There is no account of where and when they were published.

The prophecies section simply lists examples of what it claims were her prophecies (with no indicaiton of where and when they were published) and then gives one interpretation of each prophecy as if it were fact. The explanations also make assumptions about ways to interpret these prophecies. Example:

"Often when Mother Shipton would have visions of specific people she wouldn't see faces or names, but their family heraldry. "

Really? Says who?

It includes the odd sentence "Not long after Mother Shipton uttered this prophecy did a huge storm fall on York.". No date or source is given, and if the earliest prophecies attributed to her were published 80 years after her death, how do we know what happened "not long after" she "uttered" this prophecy? Or even that she "uttered" this prophecy.

I am not sufficiently knowlegable about Shipton to suggest specifically how to change this article. However, at the very least, sources should be given and specific interepetaitons of prophecies should be removed, or spelled out as being *examples* of how prophecies of this type might be interpreted. But ultimately, it would be good to get some clarity on whether these cited prophecies are from the "original" published prophecies (80 years after her death) or are even later claims.

Rg9320 25 June 2021‎


 * Agree the current section has problems with the tone and sources that grow into a POV problem. But I wanted to add it may have been unintentional POV by someone just trying to explain what they thought was the meaning. JaikeV (talk) 09:11, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks like the main modern source being cited for this section is the "What'shername" podcast, which though it is apparently presented by two people with academic training (according to their Who are we? page Katie Nelson has a PhD in history and Olivia Meikle has an MA in English & gender studies and teaches gender studies at a university) seems to be more an entertainment show than serious historical scholarship. And at least some of the claims made in this section are questionable at best and nonsense at worst.  Take for instance Mother Shipton:
 * The cow mentioned represents the heraldry of Henry VIII: uh, why? Henry VIII's emblems were the Tudor rose and the Beaufort portcullis.  I can't find any evidence that he was ever represented heraldically as a cow.
 * the bull similarly represents Anne Boleyn: okay, the bull's head did at least represent the Boleyn family, but Anne Boleyn's own arms granted after her marriage to Henry didn't include this – they instead used the Butler arms that her father got the rights to when he was made Earl of Wiltshire on her marriage.
 * 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 and all his policies for England unclear why Wolsey should be a peacock. None of the three animals on his coat of arms (choughs, leopards, and a lion) are a peacock.  Peacocks don't have any association with butchers and aren't usually considered lowly animals.  More generally, it's unclear why Wolsey features in this at all – Anne Boleyn's rise is his fall from grace, and the Dissolution of the Monasteries doesn't start until several years after Wolsey's death!  Wolsey was a good Catholic – he wasn't guiding Henry VIII to dissolve the monasteries!
 * This whole interpretation strikes me as complete rubbish. For extraordinary claims like "Mother Shipton made accurate prophecies" we need much better sourcing. (Especially given this so-called prophecy was first published 130 years after the events it allegedly prophecied, and Mother Shipton herself survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries by two decades!) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:30, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
 * In fact, the more I look at it the more I think this subsection is irredeemable, so I've got rid of it entirely. The rest of the prophecies section I would be inclined to deal with similarly – a section written based on actual reliable secondary sources analysing the prophecies would be a good thing to include (assuming such sources exist) but this is just not it. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:35, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I think the information about Charles Hindley in "Prophecy of the end of times" is useful if it has good sources. The 1881 book isn't bad and does directly call Hindley a fabricator. And maybe the section "Technology" can stand with a more critical accompanying, but it doesn't seem to be in the reference. It's credited as a forgery by Hindley in other sources though. JaikeV (talk) 11:39, 7 June 2023 (UTC)