Mother Shipton
An 1804 portrait of Shipton with a monkey or familiar, taken from an oil painting dating from at least a century earlier[1]
Born	Ursula Southeil c. 1488 Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, England
Died	1561 (aged 72–73)
Other names	Ursula Soothtell, Ursula Sontheil
Occupation	Fortune-teller, prophetess

Ursula Southeil (c. 1488 – 1561; also variously spelt as Ursula Southill, Ursula Soothtell^[2] or Ursula Sontheil^[3][4]), popularly known as Mother Shipton, is said to have been an English soothsayer and prophetess.

She has sometimes been described as a witch and is associated with folklore involving the origin of the Rollright Stones of Oxfordshire, reportedly a king and his men transformed to stone after failing her test. William Camden reported an account of this in a rhyming version in 1610.^[5][6]

The first known edition of her prophecies was printed in 1641, eighty years after her reported death. This timing suggests that what was published was a legendary or mythical account. It contained numerous mainly regional predictions and only two prophetic verses.^[7]

One of the most notable editions of her prophecies was published in 1684.^[7] It gave her birthplace as Knaresborough, Yorkshire, in a cave now known as Mother Shipton’s Cave.^[a] The book reputed Shipton to be hideously ugly, and that she had married Toby Shipton, a local carpenter, near York in 1512, and told fortunes and made predictions throughout her life.