MOTHER Shipton is a legend. Ask anyone about her, and they are likely to scratch together a few facts: witch, prophetess, lived in a cave... Yet despite this fame, no one had undertaken a serious, historical study into her life. Until now.

Yorkshire historian Dr Arnold Kellett has spent ten years researching the evolution of the Mother Shipton story. No one is better qualified: he is an authority on Knaresborough, the traditional birthplace of the soothsayer, and was twice town major.

Dr Kellett's research has taken him to London, Hereford, Oxford and Liverpool, as well as many libraries and museums in North Yorkshire.

The resulting work, Mother Shipton: Witch And Prophetess is a fascinating detective story. Dr Kellett tracks down clues, sifts the evidence and sets about disentangling the real Mother Shipton "from the fanciful trappings woven by centuries of spin doctors".

At one time Mother Shipton's supposed foresight made her more famous than her French contemporary, Nostradamus. She is claimed to have predicted the Siege of York, the Great Fire of London, railways, aircraft, the Internet and even the end of the world.

Although she is said to have been born about 1488, the first written reference to her is in a pamphlet from 1641.

It recounts her prophecy that Cardinal Wolsey would see York but never reach it, despite his being appointed Archbishop of York by Henry VIII. The Cardinal angrily threatened to have her burnt at the stake when he got to the city.

But he never did. Wolsey was arrested at Cawood on a charge of high treason. On his way back to London he became ill with dysentery, dying in Leicester in November 1530.

Whether her prophecy was true or not, it certainly established Mother Shipton as a national name.

She was not given to cheery predictions. A particularly grim vision begins: "Then will Ravens sit on the Crosse and drinke as much bloud of the nobles, as of the Commons, then woe is mee, for London shall be destroyed for ever after; then there shall come a woman with one eye, and she shall tread in many mens bloud to the knee..."

Two specific catastrophes she was said to have foreseen are the Siege of York and the Fire of London.

York was besieged by Parliamentary forces in 1644 during the Civil War, and much of the widow Shipton's prediction, allegedly made more than a century earlier, came true.

Her prophecy that disaster would befall London was less accurate. It did not even mention fire. But when, in 1666, a terrible blaze consumed much of the city, many Londoners instantly saw it as the fulfilment of Mother Shipton's vision.

It was even mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary. Recording a conversation with a naval commander, Pepys writes: "He says he was on board The Prince when the news came of the burning of London; and all the Prince said was, that now Shipton's prophecy was out."

After considering some of her most colourful predictions, Dr Kellett turns to the question: did Mother Shipton really exist?

She certainly got about: Knaresborough has several rivals claiming her for their own, from a Buckinghamshire village to many London locations, to Somerset, Norfolk, Oxfordshire and Wales.

Dr Kellett finds some historical worth in an account that suggests, despite her exceptional ugliness, she married Toby Shipton, a carpenter. The author believes Shipton-by-Beningbrough, near York, has a claim to be the home of Toby Shipton and even uncovers evidence from York Minster Library records of a man that could have been Mother Shipton's father-in-law.

But Dr Kellett is cheerfully sceptical of the claims that the prophetess's home was the cave next to the Dropping Well in Knaresborough.

"The setting is perfect for the birth of a witch and prophetess... The music of the magical water dripping over the mossy brow of the rock, the river flowing past the cave, the surrounding woodland with its air of mystery and antiquity... How understandable that the legend should have been taken to its logical conclusion and the birth declared to have been here!"

Mother Shipton's image turns up in the most unlikely places. It can be seen in the Muse de la Marionette in France, where a wooden Mother Shipton dangling from strings is displayed as the "oldest known English puppet". Dating from the early 1700s, it smokes a real pipe.

And for generations she was a favourite theatrical character. "I consider her to have been the very first pantomime dame, her role always being played by a man," Dr Kellett writes.

The first known dramatisation was published under the unwieldy title The Life Of Mother Shipton, A New Comedy. As It Was Acted Nineteen Days Together With Great Applause.

She makes a fashionably late debut, in scene six, saying: "Now both in mind and form I am a perfect witch. What hitherto I have done has spread my fame far wider than it is, so that those who before looked upon me as a crack-brained woman, now begin to admire me and esteem my words as Oracles."

The great 18th century actor-manager David Garrick performed a work entitled "Prologue for Mother Shipton to a New Speaking pantomime".

The manuscript opens with stage directions. "Upon the drawing up of the curtain - thunder and lightning - Mother Shipton rides across the stage on a broomstick - and then enters." You can almost hear the gasps from a delighted audience.

Her leading role in subsequent pantomimes did wonders for her image. "Now she was associated with beauty and goodness," Dr Kellett notes.

By the 19th century, he writes, the Mother Shipton character faded away from the theatre. "Yet Mother Shipton had made a contribution both to the tradition of the dame, essentially an older woman played by a man, and also to the tradition of the fairy godmother - played by a woman in Cinderella, but with a similar protective role and similar power to effect transformations."

Dr Kellett chooses not to conclude his book by examining Mother Shipton's foretelling of the end of the world - that is left to the penultimate chapter. The final pages are devoted to the resilience of her legend.

And what a legend. Was she a crack-brained witch or a visionary to rival Nostradamus? Was she born in a Knaresborough cave, or is that idea as fanciful as the cuddly panto dame?

Hers is quite a story, and we should be thankful to Dr Kellett for examining it in detail for the first time.

Mother Shipton: Witch And Prophetess by Arnold Kellett is published by George Mann, price £7.95

Updated: 11:45 Monday, July 22, 2002