One day in 12th century England two unknown children appeared near the town of Woolpit,
Suffolk.
These were no ordinary kids though.
They had green skin, strange clothes, an inability to speak the language, some very odd dietary
requirements and there was no sign as to where they were from.
According to the only two sources supposedly written within living memory of the incident,
when communication was eventually established, things only got weirder.
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past and today we’re looking at the green children of Woolpit.
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The two primary sources which discuss this strange tale were both written by men from
religious houses.
The earliest mention we have of it comes from William of Newburgh, an Augustinian canon
based in the northern county of Yorkshire.
He died in around 1198 and his book, Historia Rerum Anglicarum (meaning the History of English
Affairs), was written several years before.
It’s there that this story appears.
The other version comes from Ralph of Coggeshall, a Cistercian abbot living in Essex.
He died sometime after 1226 and wrote about the children in his book, Chronicon Anglicanum
(the Chronicle of England) during the 1220s.
Both men tell more or less the same story, but with a few key differences.
William says that this event happened during the reign of King Stephen (thereby placing
it between 1135 and 1154) and claims that although he had his doubts about its veracity,
he has been swayed by what he calls ‘the weighty testimony of so many reliable people’.
He says that one day during harvest time in the village of Woolpit, so named because of
the nearby ditches (or pits) which were designed to entrap the wolves still living in England
at the time:
two children, a boy and a girl, emerged from these ditches.
Their entire bodies were green, and they were wearing clothes of unusual colour and unknown
material.
As they wandered bemused over the countryside, they were seized by the reapers and led to
the village.
Many people flocked to observe this most unusual sight, and for several days they were kept
without food.
So they were now almost fainting with hunger, yet they paid no attention to any food offered
to them.
It then chanced that beans were brought in from the fields; they at once grabbed these,
and looked for the beans in the stalks, but when they found nothing in the hollow of the
stalks they wept bitterly.
Then one of the bystanders pulled the beans from the pods and offered them to the children,
who at once gleefully took and ate them.
For several months they were nourished by this food until they learned to eat bread.
In the end they gradually lost their own colour when the qualities of our foodstuffs had their
effect.
They became like us, and also learned the use of our speech.
Persons of prudence decided that they should receive the sacrament of holy baptism, and
this was also administered.
But the boy, who seemed to be younger, lived only a short time after baptism and then died
prematurely, whereas the girl continued unaffected, differing not even in the slightest way from
the women of our kind.
She certainly took a husband later at Lynn [this is probably the place now known as King’s
Lynn], according to the story, and was said to be living a few years ago.
Once they had the use of our language, they were asked who they were and where they came
from.
They are said to have replied: ‘We are people from Saint Martin's land; he is accorded special
reverence in the country of our birth.’
When they were next asked where that land was, and how they had come from there to Woolpit,
they said: "We do not know either of these things.
All we remember is that one day we were pasturing our father’s flocks in the fields, when
we heard a mighty din such as we often hear at St. Edmund’s when they say the bells
are ringing out.
When we turned our attention to the sound which caused us surprise, it was as though
we were out of our minds, for we suddenly found ourselves among you in the fields where
you were harvesting."
When they were asked whether people believed in Christ there, or whether the sun rose,
they said that it was a Christian country and had churches.
"But the sun does not rise among the natives of our land," they said "and it obtains very
little light from the sun's rays, but is satisfied with the measure of its brightness which in
your country precedes its rising or follows its setting.
Moreover a shining land is visible not far from our own, but a very broad river divides
the two."
Ralph’s account is remarkable similar.
He doesn’t specify when these events occurred, but the story is sandwiched in between two
others which he says took place during the reigns of Henry II and Richard I (that’s
Richard the Lionheart), suggesting that the green children might have appeared while one
of these men was on the throne, i.e. between 1154 and 1199.
His potential dating of the story doesn’t match up with William’s therefore, who you’ll
recall, doesn’t place it any later than King Stephen’s death in 1154.
Descriptions of where they were from and when the boy died are also slightly different and
Ralph explains where they were supposedly housed and names at least one of his sources
as being the man who took them in.
He says:
A boy and his sister were found by the inhabitants of that place near the mouth of a pit which
is there, who had the form of all their limbs like to those of other men, but they differed
in the colour of their skin from all the people of our habitable world; for the whole surface
of their skin was tinged of a green colour.
No one could understand their speech.
When they were brought as curiosities to the house of a certain knight, Sir Richard de
Calne, at Wikes, they wept bitterly.
Bread and other victuals were set before them, but they would touch none of them, though
they were tormented by great hunger, [they believed all food of this kind inedible] as
the girl afterwards acknowledged.
At length, when some beans just cut, with their stalks, were brought into the house,
they made signs, with great avidity, that they should be given to them.
When they were brought, they opened the stalks instead of the pods, thinking the beans were
in the hollow of them; but not finding them there, they began to weep anew.
When those who were present saw this, they opened the pods, and showed them the naked
beans.
They fed on these with great delight, and for a long time tasted no other food.
The boy, however, was always languid and depressed, and he died within a short time.
The girl enjoyed continual good health; and becoming accustomed to various kinds of food,
lost completely that green colour, and gradually recovered the sanguine habit of her entire
body.
She was afterwards regenerated by the laver of holy baptism, and lived for many years
in the service of that knight (as I have frequently heard from him and his family), and was rather
loose and wanton in her conduct.
Being frequently asked about the people of her country, she asserted that the inhabitants,
and all they had in that country, were of a green colour; and that they saw no sun,
but enjoyed a degree of light like what is after sunset.
Being asked how she came into this country with the aforesaid boy, she replied, that
as they were following their flocks, they came to a certain cavern, on entering which
they heard a delightful sound of bells; ravished by whose sweetness, they went for a long time
wandering on through the cavern, until they came to its mouth.
When they came out of it, they were struck senseless by the excessive light of the sun,
and the unusual temperature of the air; and they thus lay for a long time.
Being terrified by the noise of those who came on them, they wished to fly, but they
could not find the entrance of the cavern before they were caught."
Other versions of this tale were written up in later centuries in which extra details
were added (such as the girl taking the name Agnes), but all have been based on these two
sources and so these are what we’re going to focus on today.
Historians and others have tried to make sense of this story in numerous ways.
One early theory promoted by the 16th and 17th century writer, Robert Burton, was that
the children fell from the moon.
In the 20th and 21st centuries different planets have been mooted as their possible homeland.
I’m going to assume though that we’re all happy enough to discount these outlandish
‘theories’ (in inverted commas) right here.
Another idea proposed by Paul Harris in The Fortean Times magazine in 1998 (this publication
focuses on the supernatural and unexplained), is that the siblings were the children of
Flemish immigrants and this is why they spoke no English and had seemingly odd clothes.
Their strange skin colour has been accounted for by an illness called chlorosis, which
would clear with a healthier diet.
St Martin’s land was perhaps Fornham St Martin, located about 8 miles away from Woolpit
and so within walking distance.
What’s more, many Flemish people died during the Battle of Fornham St Martin in 1173 and
had the children’s parents been among them, this would explain why no one came looking
for them.
There are holes in these explanations though.
The Battle of Fornham St Martin took place decades after the death of Stephen (which
doesn’t tally with William’s account) and if the children were Flemish, why didn’t
anyone recognise their speech, even in what would have presumably been the well-educated
household of a Knight.
Furthermore, why was this ‘green sickness’ as it was also referred to, so strange to
the locals?
Surely if it was caused by a dietary deficiency of some sort it would have been seen in other
individuals, yet Ralph specifically says that the skin colour was like nothing ever seen
before in the area.
In addition, chlorosis isn’t even recognised anymore as ever having been a real disease.
Instead it is thought to have been a misdiagnosed form of anaemia caused by severe iron deficiency.
It was also commonly believed to be a female malady (which doesn’t chime with the boy
having had it as well) and it suddenly disappeared in the early 20th century, right around the
time modern medicine was taking off.
The Oxford English dictionary defines it thus:
A disorder believed to occur almost exclusively in young, virginal women soon after puberty,
characterized by a greenish pallor of the skin, cessation or irregularity of menstruation,
and weakness, often accompanied by pica [which means eating odd things, often with no nutritional
value] or other disturbance of appetite … Also called green sickness.
Now historical.
It goes on to add that ‘social and cultural attitudes towards women and menstrual physiology
may have played an important role in the designation of chlorosis as a distinct clinical entity.’
I did search to see if any kind of anaemia would turn one’s skin green, but while it
can certainly give you an abnormal pallor, I didn’t find anything to suggest a green
colour.
Still, if there are any medical doctors listening who can shed some further light on this, please
do share your knowledge below and let me know if I’ve missed something.
None of the explanations proposed explain the odd story told by the girl in later life
about the strange twilight land she and the boy came from, or how they got to Woolpit
and are we really to believe that they either didn’t recognise or didn’t trust any food
except beans, yet didn’t even know how to get said beans out of the pods?
If we want to believe that William and Ralph were being truthful in their accounts, the
only explanations for the bizarre tales this girl told are that she made them up, or others
embellished her account in between the time she told it and the time it reached our two
writers.
Were William of Newburgh and Ralph of Cotteshall being truthful though, or is this story a
mistake, a lie, or a work of fiction on their parts, making it unnecessary to try to explain
it logically?
To attempt to answer this, let’s think about how reliable our two sources are.
William was apparently writing over 20 years closer in time to the supposed appearance
of the green children and insisted that he had heard the story from numerous first hand
witnesses.
This seems to give him a degree of credibility, especially when he acknowledges that he found
it difficult to believe as well.
If we look at the rest of his book though, we discover that actually he had a habit of
recounting outlandish tales (often ghost and zombie stories) and saying that he’d received
his information from usually unnamed sources.
Perhaps he was especially gullible, perhaps he wrote on the understanding that his audience
would be able to tell which parts of his book were true and which weren’t, or perhaps
he was just lying to spice up his narrative.
Then we have Ralph.
He supposedly wrote much later (but then again he indirectly suggests the children appeared
much later too), but does at least give us a named source in the form of Sir Richard
De Calne.
There are few details of De Calne’s life available but modern researcher, John Clark,
has shown that this Knight did exist and likely died in or before 1188.
Ralph’s work would also seem to benefit from the fact that he was geographically much
closer to Woolpit then William, living about 26 miles away from it, while William was up
in the north of England.
Their tales are so similar though that Michał Madej (go easy on me if I’ve mispronounced
that) has argued that they must have had the same source, while also discounting the idea
that Ralph copied William due to stylistic differences in their work and the physical
distance between them.
Clark however says that perhaps William saw a much earlier draft of Ralph’s work (decades
earlier in fact) which has not survived and that copying is therefore not impossible.
In other words, although the copy we have of Ralph’s work dates from the 1220s, perhaps
that wasn’t the first time he’d written out parts of his Chronicle and he is actually
the earlier of the two sources.
Even if William didn’t copy Ralph, Clark also agrees with the possibility that they
had the same source, specifically Sir Richard De Calne, noting that William could have received
his information via communications with the Augustinian monks living at Ixworth, which
was close to Wikes where De Calne lived.
To sum up then, this is a tough one to call.
While elements of the story are definitely untrue (most notably the twilight land filled
with green people that the children supposedly came from), it may have its basis in a real,
though probably much more mundane, event.
Perhaps two children suffering from anaemia did show up in Woolpit once upon a time and
maybe they were even Flemish immigrants who didn’t speak the language and who were picky
eaters, unused to English food, but if their skin had an unusual colouring to it, I don’t
think it was green.
This seems like a detail added in later to make the story more exciting and Madej even
suggests that the colour had a particular symbolism for a medieval audience which is
lost on us today.
The fact that our two sources were seemingly written decades after the fact also allowed
plenty of time for the tale to be embellished.
The alternative is that the whole thing is a folk story which has gradually been mistaken
for truth as the centuries have rolled by.
What do you think though?
Let me know below if you think the green children of Woolpit were real or not and if you like
strange mysteries and bizarre people, try one of these videos next.
Whatever you choose, please enjoy and until next time, keep learning.