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Once upon a time, there was a folk tale called The Green Children of Woolpit.

It's the story of two strange children who mysteriously appeared in the wolf-pit of a small village in
England.

But what makes them strange isn't that they spoke a different language or that they're not used to
seeing sunlight. It's not even because they refuse to eat anything except raw beans. It's because
they have green skin.

Where did they come from? Why are their skins green? Why are they speaking in an unknown
language? What will be their fate? Will it be a happily ever after for them?

To find the answers to these dogged questions, this 12th century English folk tale deserves to be
retold for the fact checking generation.

This is a re-telling of The Green Children of Woolpit.

Once upon a time in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk in 12th Century England, during the reign of either
King Stephen from 1135 to 1154 AD or King Henry II from 1154 to 1189 AD, the story of the green
children of Woolpit were recorded in separate, but near similar chronicles of two scholars.

One was written by Abbot Ralph of Coggeshall, and was included in the Chronicon Anglicanum
(English Chronicle) manuscript, which he took over from 1187 until his last signed entry in 1224.

In his version, the children were brother and sister, who was found by the villagers near the mouth
of a wolf-pit. They were human in form, all except for the green colour of their skin.

The children were later on brought to the house of a knight named Sir Richard de Calne, where
they were offered shelter and food.

However, they wouldn't touch anything that was served to them despite their great hunger - all
except for raw beans. In fact, it was all that they ate for a very long time.
The two, however, wouldn't share a similar fate. The boy wasn't able to adapt to their new life in
Woolpit. He fell into depression, refused to eat, and eventually succumbed to death.

On the other hand, the girl gradually grew used to eating different kinds of food. As a result, her
skin lost its green tinge and she successfully blended in, quite literally, with the people of the
village.

After learning how to speak English, she described the place where she was from as veiled in
perpetual dusk, where they saw almost no sun.

She also revealed that where she's from everything is coloured green - including the people, just
like her and her brother.

When asked about how the two of them ended up in the wolf-pit, she said they were watching
over their flocks, when they heard the melodic sound of bells coming from inside a cavern.

When they followed the sounds, their senses were overwhelmed by the blinding light of the sun
and the sudden change in temperature and when they came to, they were in the wolf-pits.

They were startled by the noise around them and tried going back where they came from, but the
entrance of the cavern wasn't there any more.

The girl continued to stay with the knight that took them in, as Abbot Ralph affirms, noting in his
records that he personally heard this from Sir Richard de Calne and his family.

He also mentions that she received the rites of baptism, implying that her actions and beliefs now
follow the moral standards of the times. But ironically, he also points out that she "was rather
loose and wanton in her conduct."

The second version was by English historian William of Newburgh, who was, at first - according to
Thomas Keightley's 1884 book, The Fairy Mythology - a sceptic.
But, after he was "at length overcome by the weight of evidence" (although what evidence it was
he doesn't make any mention in his chronicles) wrote about the green children in Historia Rerum
Anglicarum (History of English Affairs).

While William's version shares a lot of similar details with Abbot Ralph's - like the sudden
appearance of the children, the boy getting sick and eventually dying, and the girl telling the
villagers where they were from - there are a few details that either wasn't in the first version or
entirely contradicts it.

In William's records, the girl said they were from a twilit place called St. Martin's Land, named
after their patron saint. She describes the place as having many churches with its residents of the
Christian faith.

She says that St. Martin's Land also doesn't receive much sunlight, but from across the river, they
can see a very bright country. And after crossing the river and cutting through the dense forest,
they found themselves at Woolpit.

In this version, the girl married Richard Barre, an ambassador of King Henry II, changed her name
to Agnes Barre, and settled down in King's Lynn at Norfolk.

However, some scholars refute this information, citing that the only Richard Barre in King Henry
II's court was a former archdeacon, who later on retired as a canon, which makes it highly unlikely
that he ever married.

And in both versions, that's how the story abruptly and anti-climatically ends.

We're given no chance to ask "Why?" as we're bombarded with one event after another,
continuously demanding for our unquestioning acceptance of faeries, trolls, pigs that build houses,
and in this case, mysterious green children.

It's this bare bones nature of storytelling that makes folk tales too irresistible for our own
imaginations to go into meaning-making mode and try to fill in the gaps in the story.
What's kept and what's added in the story as it's passed through generations keep folk tales in a
perpetual state of transformation, giving it its literary longevity.

So, St. Martin's Land, as Paul Harris speculated in the Fortean in 1998, could be Fornham St.
Martin, a town north of Bury St. Edmunds.

The cavern in Abbot Ralph's story could've been any of the entrance to the flint mines in the area,
and the bells they heard could've been from the sound of neolithic flints inside the mines.

The children could've been Flemish immigrants, who fled from Fornham St. Martin to Woolpit
through the mines and across Thetford Forest to escape persecution from King Henry II. Which
also explains why they spoke in a different language.

The sun in William's story could've been blocked by the tall trees in Thetford Forest. And the wide
river separating St. Martin's Land and Woolpit could've been the Lark river.

Or it could be as Robert Burton hypothesized in his book The Anatomy of Melancholy, that the
children "fell from Heaven," setting forth in motion the theory that they're extraterrestrials.

This was picked up by astronomer Duncan Lunan in 1996, whose theory was that the children
accidentally teleported to Earth from another planet. Which, following all Sci-Fi tropes, would also
explain the green colour of their skin.

Of course, it could also be that they were affected by hypochromic anemia. Originally known as
chlorosis, it's a condition where the red blood cells are not only smaller but paler than normal.

It's often caused by poor diet and lack of nutrition, resulting in the reduced delivery of healthy red
blood cells to tissues is what gives the skin a green hue.

Chlorosis is a very likely explanation why they had green skin, considering that the girl lost her
skin's green tinge as soon as she started eating other types of food aside from raw beans.
But as fun as it is to find tangible pieces of evidence to prove that the folk tale of the green
children of Woolpit is real, the real fun is deciphering the symbolisms used in the story.

In literature, green is commonly used to describe two sides of the same coin. It can be used to
describe sickness, as in when we say sickly green. But we can also use it to represent health and
vitality, as in when we say fresh greens.

In Celtic mythology, green is associated with the Green Man, a decorative architectural motif used
in pagan temples and later on also in medieval churches, who represents the cycle of life.

Shakespeare used green to symbolize young love, as in the green pastorals of A Midsummer
Night’s Dream. Or jealousy, as in the green-eyed monster in Othello.

Green is also the colour of permission, as in to get the green light. As in it's okay to believe in folk
tales. It also means go, as in go ahead, begin your story with "Once upon a time" and pass the
story of the green children of Woolpit.

SOURCES:

The Green Children of Woolpit: the 12th century legend of visitors from another world,
http://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/green-children-woolpit-12th-century-
legend-visitors-another-world-002347

THE GREEN CHILDREN OF WOOLPIT - INVESTIGATING A MEDIEVAL MYSTERY,


https://eclectariumshuker.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-green-children-of-woolpit.html

The Green Children of Woolpit, http://brian-haughton.com/ancient-mysteries-articles/green-


children-of-woolpit/

1135~1154: The Green Children of Woolpit, http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/11351154-green-


children-woolpit
The Mysterious Green Children…, http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/2016/11/mysterious-green-
children/

The Irresistible Psychology of Fairy Tales, https://newrepublic.com/article/126582/irresistible-


psychology-fairy-tales

The challenge of retelling Grimms' fairy tales, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/21/


grimms-fairy-tales-philip-pullman

Jung and the Fairy Tale, Or Nosce Te Ipsum, http://psyartjournal.com/article/show/kardaun-


jung_and_the_fairy_tale_or_nosce_te_ipsu

Once Upon a Time: The lure of the fairy tale,


http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/23/once-upon-a-time-3

Into the Woods, 5: Wild Folklore, http://windling.typepad.com/blog/2013/05/wild-folklore.html

HISTORY OF THE GREEN MAN, http://www.greenmanenigma.com/history.html

Representations of the Color Green in Shakespeare by Matsuda


Misako,http://www.seijo.ac.jp/pdf/falit/225/225-3.pdf

“How green!”: The Meanings of Green in Early Modern England and in The Tempest,
https://erea.revues.org/4465

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