PROPHETS BY ACCIDENT.

Otago Witness, Issue 1917, 17 August 1888, Page 31

PROPHETS BY ACCIDENT.

If you want to be deemed a successful prophet, you must prophesy many things, and you must prophesy them vaguely. Then, in course of time, you are sure to be able to justify some of your predictions. The astrological almanac makers seem to have committed the error of attempting to be precise. Most of the prophets of Greece and Rome prophesied as vaguely as possible ; with the result that occasionally they were able to proclaim startling successes. Croesus, for example, was told by the Pythoness, that, by passing the River Halys, he should bring about the destruction of a great empire. The empire in question turned put to be his own, and not that of his enemy ; but the issue greatly increased the Pythoness' reputation ; and she deserved that it should do so,*for, if she was no prophetess, she was at least a clever woman. Yet (occasionally the profane prophets deigned to be explicit ; and now and then some of their most explicit prophecies seem to have been justified by the subsequent course of events. We may, I suppose, fairly regard these predictions as the work of men who were prophets by accident. Merlin, the traditional instructor of Arthur, King of Britain, is said to have prophesied that whenever three kings of England should succeed one another in the direct line, great national troubles should arise during the reign of the third. Edward II is the only monarch who came to the throne in these circumstances, and the record of his reign is a melancholy verification of the truth of the prediction, if it were ever uttered. In 1314 the English were ignominiously defeated at Bannockburn ; in 1326 civil war broke out ; and in 1327 the King himself was murdered by Roger Mortimer and the Queen. Fabian, the chronicler, relates that King Henry IV of England also suffered at the hands of the prophets. He had been told that he should die in Jerusalem; and, in 1413, being at Westminster, he was suddenly taken ill. Remembering the prediction, he asked where he was, and being informed that he was in the Jerusalem Chamber, he said, "Loving be to the Father of Heaven, for now I know I shall die in this chamber, according to the prophecy of me before said that I should die in Jerusalem." The king died on the 20th March. The same sort of story is related of several other historical personages; among the rest, of Pope Sylvester 11, who died in 1003. He is said to hare been an astrologer and magician, and to have made a brazen head which he enabled to pronounce the two words "yes" and "no." He first asked whether he should ever become Pope, and being answered in the affirmative, put, as a second question, " Shall I die ere I sing mass in Jerusalem 1" The head answered " No." The ambitious man considered himself to be perfectly safe in Rome ; but, unfortunately, he once celebrated mass in the Church of Jerusalem there, and, falling ill, he remembered the prophecy and died shortly afterwards. Several analogous cases, based, I suspect, on historical legends, are alluded to by Shakespeare — notably one relating to William de la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk, and another to Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. The first was warned to beware ot water and of the Tower. On the death of Henry VI he made all haste to get to France and so avoid imprisonment ; but on his passage he was captured by one, Walter Whitmore, of the ship Nicholas of the Tower, and summarily beheaded. Shakespeare makes Suffolk, when he was captured, say to Walter (whose name was then pronounced Water) : Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death ; A. cunning man did calculate my birth, And told me that by water I should die. Henry VI,, Pt. II , Act iv., Scone 1. As for the Duke of Somerset, he had been told by Margery Jourdain, the witch of Eye, that he would be defeated and slain at a castle, but that he would be victorious on the open field. The spirit conjured up by the witch says of him : Let him shun castles, Safer shall he ba upon the sandy plains Thau where castles mounted stand. Henry VI., Pt. 11, Act i., Scene i. The Duke was killed at the first battle of St. Albans, at an inn, the sign of which was a castle ; and so the prediction came true. Cardinal Wolsey had been warned to beware of Kingston ; and it was Sir William Kingston who took him to the Abbey of Leicester, where, giving up all hope, he said, " I am come to leave my bones among you." I have already' alluded to Croesus, who seems to have greatly trusted in prophets. He was once advised to guard against a mule. Cyrus was meant, he being descended from two different races, the Persians and the Medes ; and he it was who overthrew the King of Lydia. Nero was also a great believer in oracles. He once consulted the Delphian Oracle, and was told that 73 might be fatal to him. As it happened, Galba, his successor, was 73 when he was proclaimed Emperor by the soldiers. But we do not know how many other numbers Nero may have been also warned against. Michel Nostradamus, the champion quack of the sixteenth century, was a great prophet in his way, and his first attempts were published in a serious of almanacs. In 1555 he was summoned by Henry II to Paris, to give advice about the health and education of the royal princes, and he was subsequently in high favour with Charles IX Thero seems to be no doubt that among his many, forecasts he predicted the deaths of Henry II and of our own Charles I, the fire of London in 1666, and the victories of Cromwell in Flanders. But it would have gone hard with Nostradamus if half a dozen out of his myriads of wild predictions had not been justified. It is worth adding that his works were diligently studied by the young Pretender, who imagined that he found in them encouragement to attempt the restoration of the exiled house. C.