The legend of the Green Children of Woolpit concerns two children of unusual, greenish skin who reportedly appeared in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England, sometime in the 12th century, possibly during the reign of King Stephen (). The children, found to be brother and sister, were of generally normal appearance except for the green colour of their skin. They spoke in an unknown language and would eat only raw broad beans. Eventually, they learned to eat other food and lost their green colour, but the boy was sickly and died around the time of his and his sister's baptism. The girl adjusted to her new life, but she was considered to be "very wanton and impudent". After she learned to speak English, the girl explained that she and her brother had come from a land where the sun never shone, and the light was like twilight. According to one version of the story, she said that everything there was green; according to another, she said it was called Saint Martin's Land.
The only near-contemporary accounts are contained in William of Newburgh's Historia rerum Anglicarum and Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicum Anglicanum, written in about 1189 and 1220, respectively. Between then and their rediscovery in the mid-19th century, the green children seem to surface only in a passing mention in William Camden's Britannia in 1586, and in two works from the early 17th century, Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy and Bishop Francis Godwin's fantastical The Man in the Moone. Two approaches have dominated explanations of the story of the green children: that it is a folktale describing an imaginary encounter with the inhabitants of another world, perhaps subterranean or extraterrestrial, or that it presents a real event in a garbled manner. The story was praised as an ideal fantasy by the English anarchist poet and critic Herbert Read in his English Prose Style, first published in 1928, and provided the inspiration for his only novel, The Green Child, published in 1935.
Sources The village of Woolpit is in the county of Suffolk, East Anglia, about east of the town of Bury St Edmunds. During the Middle Ages, it belonged to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds and was part of one of the most densely populated areas in rural England. Two writers, Ralph of Coggeshall (died c. 1226) and William of Newburgh (c. 1136–1198), reported on the sudden and unexplained arrival in the village of two green children during one summer in the 12th century. Ralph was the abbot of Cistercian Coggeshall Abbey at Coggeshall, about south of Woolpit. William was a canon at the Augustinian Newburgh Priory, far to the north in Yorkshire. William states that the account given in his Historian rerum Anglicarum (c. 1189) is based on "reports from a number of trustworthy sources"; Ralph, writing his Chronicum Anglicanum in the 1220s, drew on the account of Sir Richard de Calne of Wykes, who supposedly sheltered the children in his manor house, north of Woolpit.
While it was common for medieval chroniclers to copy others' passages verbatim—often with little or no attribution—the accounts given by the two authors differ in some details. Literary scholar Michał Madej does not believe that William or Ralph had seen the other's manuscripts when they told the story of the Green Children. He also argues that while Ralph was based approximately from Woolpit, William "recorded it virtually from the other side of England", making it even more unlikely that the former would have had any reason to copy from the latter. Furthermore, Ralph names his sources, whereas William states he heard the tale from "unnamed persons". John Clark has suggested that it is possible that Richard de Calne was the source for both writers, and that, while William was the more distant, he was likely to have had contacts with the Augustinian Thetford Abbey. While Ralph was closer geographically, he was writing decades after William. Although William was writing relatively soon after the events depicted, Campbell has suggested that his writing is "hemmed around with doubts" as to what he is writing: although he states , this can translate as along the lines of "I am compelled to believe", but literally "I am crushed sufficiently that I am forced to believe it".
Story At harvest time one day during the reign of King Stephen (), according to William of Newburgh, the villagers of Woolpit discovered two children, a brother and sister, beside one of the wolf pits that gave the village its name. Their skin was green, they spoke an unknown language, and their clothing was unfamiliar. Ralph of Coggeshall reports that the children were taken to the home of Richard de Calne. Ralph and William agree that the pair refused all food for several days until they came across some raw broad beans, which they consumed eagerly. The children gradually adapted to normal food and in time lost their green colour. It was decided to baptise the children, but the boy, who appeared to be the younger of the two, was sickly and died before or soon after baptism.
After learning to speak English, the children—Ralph says just the surviving girl—explained that they came from a land where the sun never shone and the light was like twilight. William says the girl called their home St Martin's Land; Ralph adds that everything there was green. According to William, the children were unable to account for their arrival in Woolpit; they had been herding their father's cattle when they heard a loud noise (according to William, it was like the sound of the bells of Bury St Edmunds Abbey) and suddenly found themselves by the wolf pit where they were found. Ralph says that they had become lost when they followed the cattle into a cave and, after being guided by the sound of bells, eventually emerged into our land.
According to Ralph, the girl was employed for many years as a servant in Richard de Calne's household, where she was considered to be "very wanton and impudent". William says that she eventually married a man from King's Lynn, about from Woolpit, where she was still living shortly before he wrote. Based on his research into Richard de Calne's family history, the astronomer and writer Duncan Lunan has concluded that the girl was given the name 'Agnes' and that she married a royal official named Richard Barre.
Explanations Neither Ralph of Coggeshall nor William of Newburgh explain the "strange and prodigious" event, as William calls it, and some modern historians have the same reticence: "I consider the process of worrying over the suggestive details of these wonderfully pointless miracles in an effort to find natural or psychological explanations of what 'really,' if anything, happened, to be useless to the study of William of Newburgh or, for that matter, of the Middle Ages", says Nancy Partner, author of a study of 12th-century historiography. Nonetheless, such explanations continue to be sought and two approaches have dominated explanations of the mystery of the green children. The first is that the narrative descends from folklore, describing an imaginary encounter with the inhabitants of a "fairy Otherworld". In a few early as well as modern readings, this other world is extraterrestrial, and the green children are alien beings. The second is that it is a "garbled account" of a real event, although it is impossible to be certain whether the story as recorded is an authentic report given by the children or an "adult invention". His study of the story led Charles Oman to conclude that "there is clearly some mystery behind it all, some story of drugging and kidnapping". Medievalist Jeffrey Jerome Cohen offers a different kind of historical explanation, arguing that the story is an oblique account of the racial difference between the English and the indigenous Britons.
Folklore Twentieth-century scholars of folklore such as Charles Oman noted that one element of the children's accounts, the entry into a different reality by way of a cave, seems to have been quite popular. The medieval historian Gerald of Wales tells a similar story of a boy, a truant from school, who "encountered two pigmies who led him through an underground passage into a beautiful land with fields and rivers, but not lit by the full light of the sun". However, the specific motif that refers to the green children is poorly attested; E. W. Baughman lists it as the only example of his F103.1 category of English and North American folktale motifs: "Inhabitants of lower world visit mortals, and continue to live with them". Madej has similarly argued that the tale of the Green Children was part of a popular skein of imagination, "originating in the territories of England and Wales, that of passing through a cave to another world".
Martin Walsh, a scholar of folklore from around the world, identifies the story of the green children as "a garbled account of an atavistic harvest ritual". He considers the references to St Martin to be significant, and sees the story as evidence that the feast of Martinmas has its origins in an English aboriginal past, of which the children's story forms "the lowest stratum". However, John Clark questions Walsh's conclusions, arguing that there is no evidence of St Martin as "a figure with Otherworld connections", or to connect the children with "an atavistic harvest ritual". Madej connects the hypothetical St Martin's land with the saint himself, echoing Anne Witte who had previously argued for a connection between St Martin and the underworld. Medieval folklore closely associated him with symbols of death, such as his being mounted on a horse—a common psychopomp of the period—and his carrying a stick symbolising resurrection. He also suggests that the two children may represent, simultaneously, life and death, similarly to the near-contemporaneous tales of the Green Knight. The children's pigmentation change "would symbolise the passing from death to life, the revival occurring overground".
The eating of beans has also attracted the attention of folklorists. "It is to be noticed, too, that the habitual food of the children was beans, the food of the dead", observes K. M. Briggs. She had made the same observation about the food of the dead in her 1967 book "The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature", but John Clark casts doubt on the supposed tradition that Briggs is referring to, commenting that "an identification of beans as the food of the dead is unwarranted". However, he agrees that "beans are in many cultures associated with the dead", and Madej argues that not only had broad beans "been the symbol of death and corruption since the ancient times... they were also associated with opposite phenomena, such as rebirth and fertility".
A modern version of the tale links the green children with the Babes in the Wood. Although there are differing stories, a common motif is that they are left or taken to die in the woods—often identified as Wayland Wood or Thetford Forest—after being poisoned with arsenic by their uncle. The arsenical poisoning resulted in their colouration; they became further linked with the Woolpit children after escaping the woods, but falling into the pits before their ultimate discovery. This version of the story was known to local author and folk singer Bob Roberts, who says in his 1978 book A Slice of Suffolk "I was told there are still people in Woolpit who are 'descended from the green children', but nobody would tell me who they were!"
Other commentators have suggested that the children may have been aliens, or inhabitants of a world beneath the Earth. Robert Burton suggested in his 1621 that the green children "fell from Heaven", an idea that seems to have been picked up by Francis Godwin, historian and Bishop of Hereford, in his speculative fiction The Man in the Moone, published posthumously in 1638, which draws on William of Newburgh's account.
Contemporary explanations