Woolpit: The Green Children

Woolpit is a village in Suffolk, England, unremarkable except for one story that has persisted since the twelfth century. Two children with green skin appeared near the village, and no one has satisfactorily explained where they came from.

The Account

Two independent chroniclers, Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh, recorded the event. Their accounts agree on the essential details. During harvest time, villagers found two children, a boy and a girl, near the wolf pits at the edge of the village. Their skin was green. They spoke a language no one recognized. They refused all food except raw broad beans.

The boy weakened and died. The girl survived. Over time, her skin lost its green color. She learned English, was baptized, and took a position in a local household. When asked where she came from, she said it was a place called Saint Martin’s Land, where the sun never shone and everything was bathed in a twilight glow. She and her brother had been tending their father’s cattle when they heard a loud sound, found themselves in a cave, and emerged at Woolpit.

Explanations

Proposed explanations range from arsenic poisoning (which can produce a greenish tint), to Flemish immigrant children displaced by civil war, to an outright fabrication. None accounts for all the details. The language barrier, the green skin, the refusal of food, and the consistent testimony recorded by two separate writers in two different locations remain difficult to collapse into a single explanation.

The Village

Woolpit still exists. The village sign depicts the two green children. The wolf pits that gave the village its name are long gone.