Mother Shipton Coloring Pages
Long before Nostradamus made his name, England had its own fortune teller... a woman born in a Yorkshire cave who people swore could see the future.
Mother Shipton’s cave is still there today, and so are her “predictions,” even though most of them were written long after she died. Here’s her real story, and the legend that grew up around her.
The Well That Turns Things to Stone
Right next to Mother Shipton's cave is something almost as famous as she is: a curtain of water pouring over a rocky ledge that can turn ordinary things to stone. For centuries nobody understood why, and people whispered that the well was cursed, since anything left under its spray slowly grew a hard, grey crust, as if it had been frozen solid. The truth turned out to be simpler, if not much less strange. The water trickling down the cliff carries so much dissolved limestone that it coats whatever sits beneath it, bit by bit, the same way a dripping tap can crust a faucet with mineral scale over the years. Leave something soft hanging there for a few months, though, and it comes out looking like its own little stone statue.
These days the well is less about curses and more about teddy bears. Visitors tie old stuffed animals, baby shoes, sunhats and even umbrellas to a rail under the water and leave them there to harden. Months later, a soft, cuddly teddy bear comes back a pale, crumbly grey with every stitch and button still in place... just turned to stone. It is somehow creepy and adorable at the same time, like a toy that fell asleep for a hundred years and woke up made of rock.
Some of the figures hanging along the well are stranger still. Legend loves to stretch a good story, and around the cave people have joked for years that if you stood under the dripping water too long, you might turn to stone yourself. Nobody has ever actually tried it, at least not on purpose, but it is exactly the kind of tale Mother Shipton would have enjoyed telling.
