Green children of Woolpit - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The green children of Woolpit reportedly appeared in the village of Woolpit

Woolpit

Woolpit is a village in the English county of Suffolk, midway between the towns of Bury St. Edmunds and Stowmarket As of 2007 it has a population of 2030. It is notable for the 12th-century legend of the green children of Woolpit and for its parish church, which has especially fine medieval woodwork...

in Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

, England, some time in the 12th century, perhaps during the reign of King Stephen

Stephen, King of England

Stephen , often referred to as Stephen of Blois , was a grandson of William the Conqueror. He was King of England from 1135 to his death, and also the Count of Boulogne by right of his wife. Stephen's reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda...

. 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 green beans. Eventually they learned to eat other food and lost their green pallor, but the boy was sickly and died soon after the children were baptised. The girl adjusted to her new life, but she was considered to be "rather loose and wanton in her conduct". After she learned to speak English the girl explained that she and her brother had come from St Martin's Land, an underground world whose inhabitants are green.

The only near-contemporary accounts are contained in Ralph of Coggeshall

Ralph of Coggeshall

Ralph of Coggeshall , English chronicler, was at first a monk and afterwards sixth abbot of Coggeshall, an Essex foundation of the Cistercian order....

's Chronicum Anglicanum and William of Newburgh

William of Newburgh

William of Newburgh or Newbury , also known as William Parvus, was a 12th-century English historian and Augustinian canon from Bridlington, Yorkshire.-Biography:...

's Historia rerum Anglicarum, 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 Bishop Francis Godwin

Francis Godwin

Francis Godwin was an English divine, Bishop of Llandaff and of Hereford.-Life:He was the son of Thomas Godwin, Bishop of Bath and Wells, born at Hannington, Northamptonshire...

's fantastical The Man in the Moone
The Man in the Moone
The Man in the Moone is a book by the English divine and bishop Francis Godwin . Apparently written in the late 1620s and published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym Domingo Gonsales, it contains the account of a "voyage of utopian discovery"...

, in which William of Newburgh's account is reported.

Two approaches have dominated explanations of the story of the green children: that it is a typical folk tale describing an imaginary encounter with the inhabitants of another world, perhaps one beneath our feet or even extraterrestrial, or it is a garbled account of a historical event. The story was praised as an ideal fantasy by the English anarchist

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

poet and critic Herbert Read

Herbert Read

Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....

in his English Prose Style, published in 1931. It provided the inspiration for his only novel, The Green Child
The Green Child
The Green Child is the only completed novel by the English anarchist poet and critic Herbert Read. Written in 1934 and first published by Heinemann in 1935, the story is based on the 12th-century legend of two green children who mysteriously appeared in the English village of Woolpit, speaking an...

, written in 1934.

Sources

The village of Woolpit

Woolpit

is in the county of Suffolk

Suffolk

, East Anglia

East Anglia

East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...

, about 7 miles (11.3 km) 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

Ralph of Coggeshall

Ralph of Coggeshall , English chronicler, was at first a monk and afterwards sixth abbot of Coggeshall, an Essex foundation of the Cistercian order....

(died c. 1226) and William of Newburgh

William of Newburgh

William of Newburgh or Newbury , also known as William Parvus, was a 12th-century English historian and Augustinian canon from Bridlington, Yorkshire.-Biography:...

(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 a Cistercian monastery at Coggeshall

Coggeshall

Coggeshall is a small market town of 3,919 residents in Essex, England, situated between Colchester and Braintree on the Roman road of Stane Street , and intersected by the River Blackwater. It is known for its almost 300 listed buildings and formerly extensive antique trade...

, about 26 miles (41.8 km) south of Woolpit. William was a canon

Canon (priest)

A canon is a priest or minister who is a member of certain bodies of the Christian clergy subject to an ecclesiastical rule ....

at the Augustinian

Augustinians

The term Augustinians, named after Saint Augustine of Hippo , applies to two separate and unrelated types of Catholic religious orders:...

Newburgh Priory

Newburgh Priory is a large house near Coxwold, North Yorkshire, England. Standing on the site of an Augustinian priory, founded in 1145, it is a stately home in a rural setting with views to the Kilburn White Horse in the distance...

, far to the north in Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

. William states that the account given in his Historia rerum Anglicarum (c. 1189) is based on "reports from a number of trustworthy sources"; Ralph's account in his Chronicum Anglicanum, written some time during the 1220s, incorporates information from Sir Richard de Calne of Wykes, who reportedly gave the green children refuge in his manor, 6 miles (9.7 km) to the north of Woolpit. The accounts given by the two authors differ in some details.

Story

One day at harvest time, according to William of Newburgh during the reign of King Stephen (1135–1154), 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 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 green beans, which they consumed eagerly. The children gradually adapted to normal food and in time lost their green colour. The boy, who appeared to be the younger of the two, became sickly and died shortly after he and his sister were baptised.

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 children 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, the bells of Bury St Edmunds) 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 as a servant in Richard de Calne's household for many years, where she was considered to be "very wanton and impudent". She eventually married a man from King's Lynn

King's Lynn

King's Lynn is a sea port and market town in the ceremonial county of Norfolk in the East of England. It is situated north of London and west of Norwich. The population of the town is 42,800....

, about 40 miles (64.4 km) from Woolpit, where Ralph said 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

Duncan Lunan

Duncan Alasdair Lunan, who hails from Troon, born on the 24 October 1945 is a Scottish author, with emphasis on astronomy, spaceflight and science fiction, as well as astronomer, science reporter, and teacher...

has concluded that the girl was given the name "Agnes", and that she married a royal official named Richard Barre

Richard Barre

Richard Barre was a medieval English justice, clergyman, and scholar. He was educated at the law school of Bologna, and entered royal service under King Henry II of England, later working for Henry's son and successor Richard I. He was also briefly in the household of Henry's son Henry the Young...

Explanations

Two approaches have dominated explanations of the mystery of the green children. The first is that it is a typical folk tale, describing an imaginary encounter with the inhabitants of a "fairy Otherworld". 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 accounts of children and servants fleeing from their masters led Charles Oman to conclude that "there is clearly some mystery behind it all [the story of the green children], some story of drugging and kidnapping".

Folklore explanations

Scholars such as Charles Oman note that one element of the children's account, the entry into a different reality by way of a cave, seems to have been quite popular. Gerald of Wales tells a similar story of a boy who, after escaping his master, "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". But as a folk tale the story is rather rare; E. W. Baughman lists it as the only example of his F103.1 category of English and North American folk tales: "Inhabitants of lower world visit mortals, and continue to live with them". Martin Walsh considers the references to St Martin to be significant, and sees the story of the green children as evidence that the feast of Martinmas

St. Martin's Day

St. Martin's Day, also known as the Feast of St. Martin, Martinstag or Martinmas, the Feast of St Martin of Tours or Martin le Miséricordieux, is a time for feasting celebrations. This is the time when autumn wheat seeding is completed. Historically, hiring fairs were held where farm laborers...

has its origins in an English aboriginal past, of which the children's story forms "the lowest stratum". suggests a Celtic

Celtic mythology

Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, apparently the religion of the Iron Age Celts. Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure...

connection in a 1900 edition of Notes and Queries
Notes and Queries
Notes and Queries is a long-running quarterly scholarly journal that publishes short articles related to "English language and literature, lexicography, history, and scholarly antiquarianism". Its emphasis is on "the factual rather than the speculative"...

: "Green' spirits are 'sinless' in Celtic literature and tradition ... It may be more than a coincidence that the green girl marries a 'man of [Kings] Lynn.' Here the original [Celtic word] would be lein, evil, i.e. the pure fairy marries a sinful child of earth."

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen proposes that the green children are a memory of England's past, and the violent conquest of the indigenous Britons

Britons (historical)

The Britons were the Celtic people culturally dominating Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages. They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic...

by the Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...

followed by the Norman invasion

Norman conquest of England

The Norman conquest of England began on 28 September 1066 with the invasion of England by William, Duke of Normandy. William became known as William the Conqueror after his victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, defeating King Harold II of England...

. William of Newburgh reluctantly includes the story of the green children in his account of a largely unified England, which Cohen juxtaposes with Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur...

's The History of the Kings of Britain, a book that according to William is full of "gushing and untrammeled lying". Geoffrey's history offers accounts of previous kings and kingdoms of various racial identities, whereas William's England is one in which all peoples are either assimilated (in case of the Normans) or pushed to the boundaries (the Welsh, the Scots, and the Picts). According to Cohen the green children represent a dual intrusion into William's unified vision of England. On one hand they are a reminder of the racial and cultural differences between Normans and Anglo-Saxons, especially because of the children's claim to have come from St Martin's Land, named after Martin of Tours

Martin of Tours

Martin of Tours was a Bishop of Tours whose shrine became a famous stopping-point for pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela. Around his name much legendary material accrued, and he has become one of the most familiar and recognizable Christian saints...

; the only other time William mentions that saint is in reference to in Hastings

Hastings

Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....

, which commemorates the Norman victory in 1066. But the children also embody the earlier inhabitants of the British Isles, the "Welsh (and Irish and Scots) who [had been] forcibly anglicized ... The Green Children resurface another story that William had been unable to tell, one in which English paninsular dominion becomes a troubled assumption rather than a foregone conclusion." The boy in particular, who dies rather than become assimilated, represents "an adjacent world that cannot be annexed ... an otherness that will perish to endure".

In a modern development of the tale the green children are associated with the Babes in the Wood

Babes in the Wood

Babes in the Wood is a traditional children's tale, as well as a popular pantomime subject. It has also been the name of some other unrelated works. The expression has passed into common language, referring to inexperienced innocents entering unawares into any potentially dangerous or hostile...

, who were left by their wicked uncle to die; in this version the children's green colouration is explained by them having been poisoned with arsenic. Fleeing from the wood in which they were abandoned, possibly nearby Thetford Forest

Thetford Forest

Thetford Forest is the largest lowland pine forest in Britain, Thetford Forest Park is located in a region straddling the north of Suffolk and the south of Norfolk in England...

, the children fell into the pits at Woolpit where they were discovered. Local author and folk singer Bob Roberts states in his 1978 book A Slice of Suffolk that "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

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

, or inhabitants of a world beneath the Earth. In a 1996 article published in the magazine Analog
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine. As of 2011, it is the longest running continuously published magazine of that genre...

, astronomer Duncan Lunan

Duncan Lunan

hypothesised that the children were accidentally transported to Woolpit from their home planet as the result of a "matter transmitter" malfunction. Lunan suggests that the planet from which the children were expelled may be trapped in synchronous orbit

Synchronous orbit

A synchronous orbit is an orbit in which an orbiting body has a period equal to the average rotational period of the body being orbited , and in the same direction of rotation as that body.-Properties:...

around its sun, presenting the conditions for life only in a narrow twilight zone between a fiercely hot surface and a frozen dark side. He explains the children's green colouration as a side effect of consuming the genetically modified alien plants eaten by the planet's inhabitants.

Lunan was not the first to state that the green children may have been extraterrestrials. Robert Burton

Robert Burton (scholar)

Robert Burton was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. He was also the incumbent of St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, and of Segrave in Leicestershire.-Life:...

suggested in his 1621 that the green children may have "fell from Heaven", an idea that seems to have been picked up by Francis Godwin

Francis Godwin

Francis Godwin was an English divine, Bishop of Llandaff and of Hereford.-Life:He was the son of Thomas Godwin, Bishop of Bath and Wells, born at Hannington, Northamptonshire...

, historian and Bishop of Hereford, in his speculative fiction The Man in the Moone
The Man in the Moone
The Man in the Moone is a book by the English divine and bishop Francis Godwin . Apparently written in the late 1620s and published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym Domingo Gonsales, it contains the account of a "voyage of utopian discovery"...

, published posthumously in 1638.

Historical explanations

Many Flemish

Flemish people

The Flemings or Flemish are the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Belgium, where they are mostly found in the northern region of Flanders. They are one of two principal cultural-linguistic groups in Belgium, the other being the French-speaking Walloons...

immigrants arrived in eastern England during the 12th century, and they were persecuted after Henry II

Henry II of England

Henry II ruled as King of England , Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. Henry, the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was the...

became king in 1154; a large number of them were killed near Bury St Edmunds in 1173. Paul Harris has suggested that the green children's Flemish parents perished during a period of civil strife and that the children may have come from the village of Fornham St Martin

Fornham St Martin

Fornham St Martin is a village and civil parish in the St Edmundsbury district of Suffolk in eastern England. Located on the northern outskirts of Bury St Edmunds off east and west from the A134, in 2005 its population was 1300...

, slightly to the north of Bury St Edmunds, where a settlement of Flemish fuller

Fulling

Fulling or tucking or walking is a step in woolen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of cloth to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and making it thicker. The worker who does the job is a fuller, tucker, or walker...

s existed at that time. They may have fled and ultimately wandered to Woolpit. Disoriented, bewildered, and dressed in unfamiliar Flemish clothes, the children would have presented a very strange spectacle to the Woolpit villagers. The children's colour could be explained by green sickness

Chlorosis (medicine)

In medicine, chlorosis is a form of anemia named for the greenish tinge of the skin of a patient. Its symptoms include lack of energy, shortness of breath, dyspepsia, headaches, a capricious or scanty appetite and amenorrhoea...

, the result of a dietary deficiency. Brian Haughton considers Harris's explanation to be plausible, and the one most widely accepted, although not without its difficulties. For instance, he suggests it is unlikely that an educated local man like Richard de Calne would not have recognised the language spoken by the children as being Flemish.

Historian Derek Brewer's explanation is even more prosaic:

Legacy

The English anarchist

Anarchism

poet and critic Herbert Read

Herbert Read

describes the story of the green children in his English Prose Style, published in 1931, as "the norm to which all types of fantasy should conform". It was the inspiration for his only novel, The Green Child
The Green Child
The Green Child is the only completed novel by the English anarchist poet and critic Herbert Read. Written in 1934 and first published by Heinemann in 1935, the story is based on the 12th-century legend of two green children who mysteriously appeared in the English village of Woolpit, speaking an...

, written in 1934. A 1994 adaptation of the story written by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Kevin Crossley-Holland

Kevin John William Crossley-Holland is an English translator, children's author and poet.-Life and career:Born in Mursley, north Buckinghamshire, Holland grew up in Whiteleaf, a small village in the Chilterns...

tells it from the point of view of the green girl.

Author John Macklin includes an account in his 1965 book, Strange Destinies, of two green children who arrived in the Spanish village of Banjos in 1887. Many details of the story very closely resemble the accounts given of the Woolpit children, such as the name of Ricardo de Calno, the mayor of Banjos who befriends the two children, strikingly similar to Richard de Calne. It therefore seems that Macklin's story is an invention inspired by the green children of Woolpit, particularly as there is no record of any Spanish village called Banjos.

In 2002 English poet Glyn Maxwell

Glyn Maxwell

Glyn Maxwell is a British poet.-Early life:Though his parents are Welsh, Maxwell was born and raised in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. He studied English at Worcester College, Oxford. He began an MLitt there, but in 1987 moved to America to study poetry and drama with Derek Walcott at...

wrote a verse play

Verse drama and dramatic verse

Verse drama is any drama written as verse to be spoken; another possible general term is poetic drama. For a very long period, verse drama was the dominant form of drama in Europe...

based on the story of the green children, Wolfpit (the earlier name for Woolpit), which was performed once in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. In Maxwell's version the girl becomes an indentured servant to the lord of the manor, until a stranger named Juxon buys her freedom and takes her to an unknown destination. The green children are also the subject of a 1990 community opera performed by children and adults, composed by Nicola LeFanu

Nicola LeFanu

Nicola LeFanu is a British composer, academic, lecturer and director.-Life:Nicola LeFanu was born in England to William LeFanu and Elizabeth Maconchy . She studied at St Hilda's College, Oxford, before taking up a Harkness Fellowship at Harvard. In 1972 she won the Mendelssohn Scholarship...

with a libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

written by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Kevin Crossley-Holland

External links

The Mystery of the Green Children of Woolpit, an extensive article on the green children mystery on Brian Haughton's website.
The Green Children of Woolpit, Feralchildren.com (Archive.org)

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