The Legend Of The Green Children Of Woolpit

[Atlas]

Two children of unusual skin colour reportedly appeared in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England, during one summer in the 12th century. The children, brother and sister, were of generally normal appearance except for the green colour of their skin. They spoke in an unknown language, and the only food they would eat was beans.

Two contemporary writers, Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh, reported on the sudden and unexplained arrival in the village of the two green children.




William of Newburgh (c. 1136–1198) included his account of the Green Children in his Historia Rerum Anglicarum (The History of English Affairs) in about 1198:

Concerning the green children

Nor does it seem right to omit a wonder, unheard of by the ages, that is known to have happened in England in the time of King Stephen. Certainly I long hesitated about this matter, although it is spoken of by many people. It seemed to me ridiculous to take on trust a story that had either no rational basis or a very obscure one. At last I was overcome by the evidence of so many witnesses of such weight; so that I was forced to believe it, and to marvel at what, for all my strength of mind, I cannot grasp or fathom.

There is a village in East Anglia four or five miles distant, it is said, from the noble monastery of the blessed king and martyr Edmund. Near that village can be seen certain very ancient ditches which are called Wolf-pits in English – that is, “wolves’ ditches” – and these give their name to the nearby village.

Out of these ditches, at the time of harvest when the harvesters were busy gathering the crops in the fields, there emerged two children, a boy and a girl. Their bodies were all green, and they were dressed in clothing of an unusual colour, made of unknown material. They wandered dazed through the field, and were caught by the harvesters. They were taken to the village, where many people gathered to see such a novel spectacle, and they were held for some days without food.

Now when they were almost dying of starvation but would not take any of the food they were offered, it happened that by chance some beans were brought in from the fields. They seized them and looked for the beans inside the stems; when they found nothing in the hollow of the stems they wept bitterly. Then one of those who were present took the beans out of the pods and offered them to the children. At once they took them happily and ate them.

They were nourished by this food for some months, until they learnt the use of bread. At last, as the nature of our food prevailed, they gradually changed their colour and became like us, and also learnt the use of our language. And it seemed good to prudent people that they should receive the sacrament of holy baptism, which was done.

But the boy, who seemed the younger of the two, lived only a short time after baptism and died an early death. His sister remained well, and was not in the least different from the women of our race. Indeed, it is said, she later married a man at Lynn, and she was said still to be alive a few years ago.

Now when they had the use of our language, they were asked who they were and where they were from. It is reported that they replied: “We are people from the land of St Martin – who is held in particular veneration in the land of our birth.”

Later they were asked where that land lay and how they had come here. “We don’t know,” they said. “We only remember this: one day when we were pasturing our father’s cattle in the field we heard a loud noise – such as now we usually hear at St Edmund’s when the bells are said to be sounding. We were amazed by the noise, and when we were intent on it, suddenly it was as if we were driven out of our senses, and we found ourselves amongst you in the field where you were harvesting.”

When they were asked whether Christ was believed in there and whether the sun rose, they said the land was Christian, and there were churches there. “But,” they said, “the sun does not rise among our people. Our land is scarcely illuminated by its rays; it gets only the amount of light that among you precedes sunrise or follows sunset. But one can see a bright land not far from ours, with a very broad river separating the two.”

They are reported to have said these and many other things, too long to relate, in answer to inquisitive questioners. Let anyone say what he likes and make what he can of this affair; but I am not ashamed to have related this wonderful and marvellous happening.

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Ralph of Coggeshall (died c. 1226)’s version appears in his Chronicon Anglicanum (English Chronicle) completed during the 1220s:

Concerning a boy and a girl who emerged from the ground

Another wonder also, not unlike the previous one, happened in Suffolk at St Mary Woolpit. A boy was found, with his sister, by the inhabitants of that place, near the mouth of a certain pit that is situated there. In the shape of their whole bodies they were like other people, but they differed in the colour of their skin from all the mortal inhabitants of our world; for the surface of their skin was all coloured with a green hue. No one could understand their speech.

So they were taken as a curiosity to the house of a certain knight, Sir Richard de Calne, at Wykes, while they wept inconsolably. Bread and other foodstuff was set before them, but they were unwilling to eat any of the food that was offered them, although they were tormented by great hunger for a very long time; for they believed all foodstuffs of this sort were inedible, as the girl later admitted.

At last when some beans, newly cut with their stalks on, were carried into the house, they made signs with great eagerness that some of the beans should be given to them. When the beans were brought, they opened the stalks, not the bean pods, thinking that the beans were contained in the hollow of the stalks. But when they didn’t find beans in the stalks they began to cry again. When the bystanders noticed this, they opened the pods and showed them the naked beans. Once they were shown them, they ate them with great joy, and would touch no other food at all for a long time.

Now the boy always suffered a sort of weakness and died in a short time. But the girl enjoyed continuing good health. She became used to all sorts of food and totally lost her green colour, and she gradually recovered the ruddy appearance of her whole body.

She was afterwards regenerated by the cleansing of holy baptism, and stayed for many years in the service of that same knight (as we have often heard from the knight himself and his household); but she remained very wanton and impudent.

Now she was often asked about the people of her country. She claimed that all the inhabitants and all things that existed in that country were coloured green; they saw no sun, but enjoyed a sort of light like that which occurs after sunset.

Asked how she and the boy had come into this land, she replied that when they were following the cattle they had come into a certain cavern.

When they entered it, they had heard a beautiful sound of bells. Captivated by the sweetness of the sound they had gone on wandering through the cavern for a very long time, until they reached a way out of it.

When they came out from there they were stunned and struck senseless, as it were, by the brightness of the sun and the unusual warmth of the air, and for a long time they lay at the mouth of the cave. Then they were terrified by the noise of people coming towards them and tried to flee; but they could in no way find the entrance to the cave before they were caught.

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More: wikipedia.org/Green_children_of_Woolpit

[huyi82]

Maybe their world is parallel with ours, and they must have slipped into our world via a timeslip/wormhole for some strange reason.

i've read this story about the green children many years ago, i always wondered if more green children or something similar has been discovered since.

[Billy]

No direct sunlight where they came from, Sounds like they maybe came from within the earth. Interesting that her skin colour changed after being in direct sunlight, Or was the cave actually a portal that closed after they arrived as they could not find it afterwards.

[Atlas]

Posted by Dr Karl Shuker:


A third chronicler from this period, Gervase of Tilbury, made the same claim, and his account also amplified some of the details given in those of the other two writers:

"We are folk of St Martin's Land; for he is the chief saint among us. We know not where the land is, and remember only that one day we were feeding our father's flock in the field when we heard a great noise like bells, as when, at St Edmunds [Bury St Edmunds], they all peal together. And on a sudden we were both caught up in the spirit and found ourselves in your harvest field. Among us no sun rises, nor is there open sunshine, but such a twilight as here goes before the rising and setting of the sun. Yet there is a land of light to be seen not far from us, but cut off from us by a stream of great width."

Scroll enscribed with the green children's history inside St Mary Church, Woolpit:


http://eclectariumshuker.blogspot.co...f-woolpit.html
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Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=xFf8fM0fhiQ

Wulpet is a Mercat towne, and soundeth as much as the Woolves pit, if we may beleeve Nubrigensis, who hath told as prety and formall a tale of this place as is that fable called the True Narration of Lucian, namely, how two little boies (forsooth) of a greene colour, and of Satyrs kinde, after the had made along journey by passages under the ground from out of another world, from the Antipodes and Saint Martins Land, came up heere: of whom if you would know more, repaire to the authour himselfe, where you shall finde such matter as will make you laugh your fill, if you have a laughing spleene.

- William Camden, Britannia, 1607 (translation by Philemon Holland, source)