Ewan
23rd May 2021, 20:51
A couple of weeks ago I had occasion to visit Woolpits, a small village in Suffolk. I was only there due to work and it would be a fleeting visit - in and out. I got a taxi from Bury St Edmunds to the village of Woolpits and remarked to the driver there seemed to be some history here.
Turned out he was a bit of a local historian and he explained that 'Woolpits' wasn't anything to do with shearing sheep, as I had suspected, originally it was 'Wolf Pits'.
A kind of trap to catch wolves. So that shows how long ago this was as the last records of wolves in England predate the 1400's
Below is a complete copy/paste from here (https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/green-children-woolpit-12th-century-legend-visitors-another-world-002347)
The Children of Woolpit is an ancient account dating back to the 12 th century, which tells of two children that appeared on the edge of a field in the village of Woolpit in England. The young girl and boy had green-hued skin and spoke an unknown language. The children became sick and the boy died, but the girl recovered and over the years came to learn English. She later relayed the story of their origins, saying they came from a place called St Martin’s Land, which existed in an atmosphere of permanent twilight, and where the people lived underground. While some view the story as a folk tale that that describes an imaginary encounter with inhabitants of another world beneath our feet or even extraterrestrial, others accept it as a real, but somewhat altered account of a historical event that merits further investigation.
The account is set in the village of Woolpit located in Suffolk, East Anglia. In the Middle Ages, it lay within the most agriculturally productive and densely populated area of rural England. The village had belonged to the rich and powerful Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds.
The story was recorded by two 12 th century chroniclers - Ralph of Coggestall (died c 1228 AD), an abbot of a Cistercian monastery at Coggeshall (about 26 miles / 42 km south of Woolpit), who recorded his account of the green children in the Chronicon Anglicanum (English Chronicle); and William of Newburgh (1136-1198 AD), an English historian and canon at the Augustinian Newburgh Priory, far to the north in Yorkshire, who includes the story of the green children in his main work Historia rerum Anglicarum (History of English Affairs). The writers stated that the events took place within the reign of King Stephen (1135-54) or King Henry II (1154-1189), depending on which version of the story you read.
The Story of the Green Children
According to the account of the green children, a boy and his sister were found by reapers working their fields at harvest time near some ditches that had been excavated to trap wolves at St Mary’s of the Wolf Pits (Woolpit). Their skin was tinged with a green hue, their clothes were made from unfamiliar materials, and their speech was unintelligible to the reapers. They were taken to the village, where they were eventually accepted into the home of local landowner, Sir Richard de Caine at Wilkes.
The children would not eat any food presented to them but appeared starving. Eventually, the villagers brought round recently harvested beans, which the children devoured. They survived only on beans for many months until they acquired a taste for bread.
The boy became sick and soon succumbed to illness and died, while the girl remained in good health and eventually lost her green-tinged skin. She learned how to speak English and was later married to a man at King’s Lynn, in the neighboring county of Norfolk. According to some accounts, she took the name ‘Agnes Barre’ and the man she married was an ambassador of Henry II, although these details have not been verified. After she learned how to speak English, she relayed the story of their origins.
The girl reported that she and her brother came from the “Land of Saint Martin”, where there was no sun, but a perpetual twilight, and all the inhabitants were green like them. She described another ‘luminous’ land that could be seen across a river.
She and her brother were looking after their father’s flock, when they came upon a cave. They entered the cave and wandered through the darkness for a long time until they came out the other side, entering into bright sunlight, which they found startling. It was then that they were found by the reapers.
If you follow the link above there are some interesting comments, such as..
Duncan Lunan wrote on 13 June, 2016 - 23:58
Permalink
Thanks for a good introductory article. Just a few points if I may: 'chlorosis' is now considered to be 'a disease that never was', a catch-all name for a variety of nervous conditions suffered by young women in early industrial society, including what we now call anorexia. None of the details fit the Green Children case. There is no record of any Flemish community in the area. There was a Flemish invasion of East Anglia in the winter of 1173, but both chronicles agree the children appeared in summer. Being Flemish doesn't explain why the children were green, nor why nobody understood them: Woolpit was an aspiring market town on what was then the principal pilgrim route in England, and the children were taken to Richard de Calna, who is hard to trace, because it seems he was the head of Henry II's secret service. Nor, if they were only Flemish refugees or runaways, why would the case have interested any of the 'witnesses of such quality' cited by William of Newburgh - apparently including the king, de Calna, the head of the Knights Templar in England, the bishop of London and the ambassador Richard Barre, who married the girl if my thesis is correct - not to mention the Pope!
Analog has a long tradition of publishing cutting-edge or controversial science articles, and as a frequent contributor at the time, when I went to Woolpit I didn't think I would find more than some local background for another article. I went armed with a set of questions supplied by a historian friend, and the trail that I uncovered was so detailed that by the time the article was accepted, it was clear there would be enough material for a book. That was published as "Children from the Sky" by Mutus Liber in Edinburgh in 2012, and I would recommend anyone who's interested in the story to read the investigation in full. It is a fascinating story and although I can scarcely believe what I'm looking at, it really looks like ET abductions, for experimental purposes, with the knowledge if not the connivance of at least some of the terrestrial authorities - the X-Files in the 12th century!
So I could not find the book emboldened above, but have ordered a couple of other related books from Amazon. Maybe there is more to come..
Turned out he was a bit of a local historian and he explained that 'Woolpits' wasn't anything to do with shearing sheep, as I had suspected, originally it was 'Wolf Pits'.
A kind of trap to catch wolves. So that shows how long ago this was as the last records of wolves in England predate the 1400's
Below is a complete copy/paste from here (https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/green-children-woolpit-12th-century-legend-visitors-another-world-002347)
The Children of Woolpit is an ancient account dating back to the 12 th century, which tells of two children that appeared on the edge of a field in the village of Woolpit in England. The young girl and boy had green-hued skin and spoke an unknown language. The children became sick and the boy died, but the girl recovered and over the years came to learn English. She later relayed the story of their origins, saying they came from a place called St Martin’s Land, which existed in an atmosphere of permanent twilight, and where the people lived underground. While some view the story as a folk tale that that describes an imaginary encounter with inhabitants of another world beneath our feet or even extraterrestrial, others accept it as a real, but somewhat altered account of a historical event that merits further investigation.
The account is set in the village of Woolpit located in Suffolk, East Anglia. In the Middle Ages, it lay within the most agriculturally productive and densely populated area of rural England. The village had belonged to the rich and powerful Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds.
The story was recorded by two 12 th century chroniclers - Ralph of Coggestall (died c 1228 AD), an abbot of a Cistercian monastery at Coggeshall (about 26 miles / 42 km south of Woolpit), who recorded his account of the green children in the Chronicon Anglicanum (English Chronicle); and William of Newburgh (1136-1198 AD), an English historian and canon at the Augustinian Newburgh Priory, far to the north in Yorkshire, who includes the story of the green children in his main work Historia rerum Anglicarum (History of English Affairs). The writers stated that the events took place within the reign of King Stephen (1135-54) or King Henry II (1154-1189), depending on which version of the story you read.
The Story of the Green Children
According to the account of the green children, a boy and his sister were found by reapers working their fields at harvest time near some ditches that had been excavated to trap wolves at St Mary’s of the Wolf Pits (Woolpit). Their skin was tinged with a green hue, their clothes were made from unfamiliar materials, and their speech was unintelligible to the reapers. They were taken to the village, where they were eventually accepted into the home of local landowner, Sir Richard de Caine at Wilkes.
The children would not eat any food presented to them but appeared starving. Eventually, the villagers brought round recently harvested beans, which the children devoured. They survived only on beans for many months until they acquired a taste for bread.
The boy became sick and soon succumbed to illness and died, while the girl remained in good health and eventually lost her green-tinged skin. She learned how to speak English and was later married to a man at King’s Lynn, in the neighboring county of Norfolk. According to some accounts, she took the name ‘Agnes Barre’ and the man she married was an ambassador of Henry II, although these details have not been verified. After she learned how to speak English, she relayed the story of their origins.
The girl reported that she and her brother came from the “Land of Saint Martin”, where there was no sun, but a perpetual twilight, and all the inhabitants were green like them. She described another ‘luminous’ land that could be seen across a river.
She and her brother were looking after their father’s flock, when they came upon a cave. They entered the cave and wandered through the darkness for a long time until they came out the other side, entering into bright sunlight, which they found startling. It was then that they were found by the reapers.
If you follow the link above there are some interesting comments, such as..
Duncan Lunan wrote on 13 June, 2016 - 23:58
Permalink
Thanks for a good introductory article. Just a few points if I may: 'chlorosis' is now considered to be 'a disease that never was', a catch-all name for a variety of nervous conditions suffered by young women in early industrial society, including what we now call anorexia. None of the details fit the Green Children case. There is no record of any Flemish community in the area. There was a Flemish invasion of East Anglia in the winter of 1173, but both chronicles agree the children appeared in summer. Being Flemish doesn't explain why the children were green, nor why nobody understood them: Woolpit was an aspiring market town on what was then the principal pilgrim route in England, and the children were taken to Richard de Calna, who is hard to trace, because it seems he was the head of Henry II's secret service. Nor, if they were only Flemish refugees or runaways, why would the case have interested any of the 'witnesses of such quality' cited by William of Newburgh - apparently including the king, de Calna, the head of the Knights Templar in England, the bishop of London and the ambassador Richard Barre, who married the girl if my thesis is correct - not to mention the Pope!
Analog has a long tradition of publishing cutting-edge or controversial science articles, and as a frequent contributor at the time, when I went to Woolpit I didn't think I would find more than some local background for another article. I went armed with a set of questions supplied by a historian friend, and the trail that I uncovered was so detailed that by the time the article was accepted, it was clear there would be enough material for a book. That was published as "Children from the Sky" by Mutus Liber in Edinburgh in 2012, and I would recommend anyone who's interested in the story to read the investigation in full. It is a fascinating story and although I can scarcely believe what I'm looking at, it really looks like ET abductions, for experimental purposes, with the knowledge if not the connivance of at least some of the terrestrial authorities - the X-Files in the 12th century!
So I could not find the book emboldened above, but have ordered a couple of other related books from Amazon. Maybe there is more to come..