Birmingham.
_Limerick, Dublin, and Cork_ (Vol. viii., p. 102.).--I should think
the author of this doggrel couplet, if we are to consider it as a fair
specimen of his poetic genius, may safely be permitted to remain in
obscurity. Be that as it may, the lines are by no means new, nor are
they confined to the sister isle alone. In the _Prophecies of Nixon_,
the Cheshire Merlin, who lived nobody knows when, except that it was
certainly a "long time ago," we are given to understand that:
"London streets shall run with blood,
And at last shall sink
So that it shall be fulfilled,
That Lincoln was, London is, and York shall be
The finest city of the three."
As I have just stated, the original date of these _Prophecies_ is
somewhat involved in mystery; but I myself possess copies of three
different editions published during the last century, the first of the
three, purporting to be the sixth edition, bearing date London, 1719.
A Life of Nixon, affixed to this edition, states him to have lived and
prophesied in the reign of King James I.; at whose court, we are farther
told, he was, in conformity with his own prediction, starved to death.
His _Prophecies_ are, by the learned, held to be apocryphal; the country
folk of Cheshire, on the contrary, have as much faith in them and their
author as they have in the fact of their own existence.