Note 138 — ERA OF THE FREEMAN'S JOURNAL
Reading edition
Published in the Freeman's Journal, March 27, 1782, with the following introduction:
"Mr. Printer: The people of England at this time seem persuaded or rather deluded into the opinion that the American revolt will be quashed in the year 1786, and under that idea it is likely will prosecute the war with vigour for some time to come. This infatuation chiefly owes its birth to a prophecy of one John Cosins, who lived in the reign of the Second Charles, importing that a certain transatlantic insurrection, and the Kirk of Scotland, will both fall to the ground in the year above mentioned. Cosins's predictions are as follows, taken from the Royal Gazette of the 18th ult.:
'When a branch of the thistle gets over the Atlantic, And in a new world the root shall be planted, And when it doth arrive at a degree of perfection It surely will breed a great insurrection. In the year seventy and four the root will be polished, And in eighty and six it will be quite abolished. The lily and the thistle in that year will unite, But the lion and the dun cow will put them to flight. The eagle will eagerly join in the fray, But luna will clip both their wings in a day. O thistle, O thistle, thy wounds will be sore. Kirk and kirk government will be no more, And you'll be abridg'd of all civil power.'
To show that America has not been wholly destitute of oracular sages in past times, I send you the following choice words or prophetical hints of an illiterate fisherman, who died about thirty years ago at his habitation, a few miles above the mouth of the Susquehanna. I discovered the paper containing them by mere accident in tumbling over the leaves of an old book at an inn near that place. If you think the lines worth inserting in your paper, they are at your service."
Reprinted without change in the edition of 1786, the text of which I have followed above. In later editions the prophecy was changed somewhat to conform to historical facts.