strange prophecies and uncommon predictions
of the famous Mother Shipton, known
by the appellation of the Yorkshire Prophetess.
London, 8vo. 1797." This book is,
in point of style, a very worthless production,
but it indicates one or two points in
Mother Shipton's career, not given elsewhere.
We learn from it that the prophetess died in
fifteen hundred and fifty-one,—not at the
stake, like Anne Askew or Joan Becher,
for she was too wise to meddle with doctrinal
subjects—but quietly in her bed, her last
prediction having reference to the period of her
own decease. After her death a monument
was erected to her memory on the high
north road, about a mile from York, where,
to judge by the frontispiece of this Life, she
figured in the high steeple-crowned hat and
costume with which her personal appearance
is usually associated. Her epitaph is said to
have run thus:

"Here lies one who never ly'd,
Whose skill often has been try'd;
Her prophesies shall still survive,
And ever keep her name alive."

After this long exordium, which resembles
a puritanical grace introductory to very
short commons like the chaplain's benediction
on Sir Dugald Dalgetty's meal at the
Castle of Arderroohr,—I proceed to the
legend concerning Mother Shipton:—

On a high ridge which separates the
southern extremity of Warwickshire from
the county of Oxford, and distant about four
miles from the picturesque market-town of
Chipping Norton, are still to be seen the
remains of a very interesting monument,
undoubtedly of Druidical origin, although
ascribed by local tradition to the agency of
Mother Shipton. Archaeologists know this
monument by the name of Rollrich Stones,
but the inhabitants of the adjacent villages
of Great and Little Rollewright give the
separate parts various designations illustrative
of their own belief. The principal feature
of these remains is a group of stones
forming a ring which is not completely
circular, the longest diameter, from north to
south, being nearly thirty-six yards, and the
shortest not quite thirty-five. Originally
they all stood upright, but not more than
seven-and-twenty of the number, which is
stated to have been sixty-five, remain in that
position, the rest lying prone on the earth,
half-hidden by the soil and long waving
grass. Owing to this circumstance it is very
difficult to count them correctly, and the
peasants say, with an air of mystery, that it
is not possible to do so, no two persons agreeing
in the tale, nor the same number being
arrived at by a repetition of the experiment.
I found this true in niy own instance, and
the number I reckoned certainly differed
considerably from the result of an attempt
made by another person. As we had not
time to verify our separate statements or
correct our own mistakes, the magical difficulty
was left unsolved. None of the stones
in this circle are more than five feet high,
and some of them are barely twelve inches
above the ground; but at a distance of about
eighty or ninety yards to the eastward, stand
five others, of considerable height—the tallest
being nearly eleven feet—which, as they
lean towards each other, with an opening
from the west, are called the Five Whispering
Knights. Nor are these all that remain,
for, at about the same distance from the circle,
to the north-east, and in a field by itself,
divided by the road which separates the
counties, stands one large stone in solitary
majesty, popularly known as the King's
Stone. It is upwards of five feet broad and
between eight aud nine feet high, and from
its twisted shape and rough-grained surface
(as it may well present, after a buffet with the
weather of a couple of thousand years) is the
most remarkable of the series. The learned
Camden and, after him, Dr. Plot, the author of
the Natural History of Oxfordshire, pronounced
the monument to be a memorial erected by
Rollo the Dane, who won a great victory
somewhere about the beginning of the tenth
century, but their speculations were set at rest
by Dr. Stukeley, who, with greater reason,
declared the remains Druidical, the circle
having been a temple, the five detached
stones a cistvaen or cromlech, and the solitary
one a cardinal point. Independently
of the form of the larger group, Dr. Stukeley
relied upon its etymology, deriving Rollrich,
not from Rollo the Dane, but from Rholdrwyg,
the wheel or circle of the Druids;
and this, without doubt, is the true interpretation.

Now for the popular opinion of the monument.
The stones, according to universal
acceptation amongst the peasantry, are
neither more nor less than a petrified camp
or army. Never look for chronology in these
matters, but take the legend as you find it.
If you believe that men have once been
turned into stone, it is not worth your while
to question who performed the feat, or to ask
when it happened; so the story runs as
follows:

A certain ambitious warrior, being minded
to reduce the whole of England beneath his
sway, set out one day (from what place is not
stated) with a train of five knights and a
well-appointed band of sixty fine hardy
soldiers, to effect his meditated conquest.
Advancing from the south in his progress
towards the borders of Warwickshire, where
the issue of his adventure, as it had been
darkly foretold him, was to be determined,
the king halted his little army for the night
on the edge of Whichwood Forest, not far
from the spot where now stands the little
village of Shipton-under-Whichwood. His
reason for pausing there is alleged to have
been his desire to confer with the wise
woman, who dwelt at Shipton at that time,
and who afterwards bequeathed her name to