Who Were the Green Children of Woolpit?

The story of the so-called “Green Children of Woolpit” is one of the strangest stories that has come out of medieval England. It is the story of two children, a boy and a girl, with green skin who were, according to two chroniclers writing independently, discovered outside the village of Woolpit in around the middle of the twelfth century. Although all kinds of bizarre explanations have been proposed, I think that the most mundane explanation is probably the most likely.

The story according to William of Newburgh

The earliest account of the so-called “Green Children of Woolpit” comes from the medieval chronicler William of Newburgh (lived 1136 – 1198) in Book One, Chapter 27 of his book Historia rerum Anglicarum (“History of the Deeds of the English”), which he wrote in around 1189.

William of Newburgh begins his account by stating that he does not wish to retell the story of the Green Children of Woolpit, because it was so strange and unbelievable, but he states that he has heard that story from so many different persons of the utmost respectability that he felt compelled to recount the tale.

According to William of Newburgh’s account, during the harvest season of a year during the reign of King Stephen (ruled 1135 – 1154), the villagers of the town of Woolpit in East Anglia discovered two children, a boy and a girl, who had emerged from one of a number of ancient ditches that were located near the town.

He tells us that the children’s bodies were totally green and that they were wearing clothes of unusual color and unknown material and that they spoke a foreign language that no one could recognize. He says that the villagers tried to give them food, but they would not take it, even though they were “nearly fainting with hunger.”

Then, by chance, it happened that the villagers were bringing the beans in from the fields. The children grabbed some of the beanstalks and looked for beans in them, but they found none, so they cried. Then the villagers pulled beans from the bean pods and gave them to the children, who eagerly devoured them raw.

For months, the children would eat nothing but raw broad beans, but, eventually, they learned to eat bread and other normal foods. After they began eating a more diverse diet, their greenness of their skin faded and their skin turned a normal color.

ABOVE Image from Wikimedia Commons of broad beans. According to William of Newburgh, the Green Children ate nothing but uncooked broad beans for their first few months in Woolpit.

Eventually, the children learned to speak English. They told the villagers that they came from a land where Saint Martin of Tours was held in special reverence. They said they had been tending to their father’s sheep in the fields when they had heard a loud noise like the sound of church bells ringing and then they somehow or another found themselves in the fields outside Woolpit. They explained that they came from a Christian country where there were churches, but that their land was dark all the time and that the sunlight was always dim, as though it were dawn or twilight.

The children were baptized, but the boy, who was the younger of the two, fell ill and died shortly therefore. The girl, however, survived to adulthood. As a grown woman, she was no different in any way from the native English women. She eventually married a man from King’s Lynn in Norfolk. William tells us that he heard she was still living there only a few years before his writing of the account.

The story according to Ralph of Coggeshall

The second surviving account of the Green Children of Woolpit comes from the Chronicum Anglicanum (“English Chronicle”), which was written in around 1220, around thirty years after William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum Anglicarum, by an English chronicler named Ralph of Coggeshall.

Ralph of Coggeshall was writing much later than William of Newburgh, but he lived much closer to Woolpit, since Ralph’s hometown of Coggeshall is only 26 miles (42 kilometers) from Woolpit. Furthermore, Ralph explicitly states that he learned the story from the Richard de Calne, the man who looked after the children, himself. We have no reason to doubt this claim and, if it is true, it would make Ralph of Coggeshall’s account a direct second-hand account rather than third-hand or even fourth-hand.

Ralph’s account seems to be completely independent from William’s, indicating that neither of them made the story up. In other words, they both certainly heard the story from someone else.

ABOVE: Modern-day sign for the village of Coggeshall, which was Ralph of Coggeshall’s hometown

Ralph’s account is somewhat shorter than William of Newburgh’s and, although the two accounts agree on most aspects of the story, there are a few details they disagree on. For instance, while William of Newburgh says that the children were found during the reign of King Stephen, Ralph of Coggeshall says that they were found during the reign of Stephen’s successor Henry II (ruled 1154 – 1189).

Also, according to Ralph’s account, the boy died before he had a chance to learn English and the villagers learned where the children had come from exclusively from the girl. Ralph’s version of the story of how the children came to Woolpit is also quite different from William’s.

Ralph says that the land where the children came from was not only in a state of perpetual twilight, but also that everything there was green. He also says that the children had gotten lost after following some of their father’s cattle into a cave that they found their way out of the cave by following the sound of church bells, which led them to Woolpit.

Ralph also gives more information about what happened to the girl after her brother’s death but before her marriage. He tells us that she worked for many years as a servant in the home of Richard de Calne, but adds that, according to Richard de Calne himself, she was “nimium lasciva et petulans” (“extremely lascivious and insolent”).

A fairy tale… or perhaps something more?

The first question we have to ask is whether or not there is any truth at all to the story of the so-called “Green Children of Woolpit.” Obviously, the story as recounted by the chroniclers cannot be completely true, but perhaps there is some remote historical basis of some kind.

Given that William of Newburgh and Ralph of Coggeshall were both writing independent of one another and they were both writing relatively close to the time when the events they describe are alleged to have taken place, I am rather inclined to think there is some historical basis behind this tale, especially since Ralph claims to have met with Richard de Calne himself and heard the story directly from him.

Now, you can find all sorts of articles online about the so-called “Green Children of Woolpit” on the internet, nearly all of which focus on the bizarre nature of the story and revel in the fact that the story it is still “unexplained.” Likewise, you can find all sorts of bizarre and outlandish explanations for the Green Children. Many have tried to claim that the Green Children were extraterrestrial beings from another planet, that they were fairies from the Otherworld, or even that they were time-travelers from the future.

Obviously, none of these rather outlandish explanations are tenable. What is funny, though, is the fact that, while everyone is so busy focusing on how “bizarre” this story is, no one seems to be focusing on how not bizarre the story really is. If we set aside the whole story about the children coming from the Land of Saint Martin where it is always twilight for just one moment and focus solely on what William and Ralph tell us about how the children were found, we quickly discover there is actually not much here that is really all that weird.

The children’s unusual speech and clothing

William and Ralph tell us that the children spoke a strange language and that they dressed in strange clothing. All this really means is that they were foreign. Since we live in such an Anglophone world, it is easy for us to forget that, in the twelfth century, English was just one of several dozen languages spoken throughout Britain. For instance, there were people who spoke Norman French as well as many dialects of Cornish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Old East Norse, Old West Norse, and possibly Cumbric.

There were also many other languages spoken in the lands close to Britain including various dialects of Breton, Middle Dutch, Middle High German, Old Frisian, Middle Irish, Manx, Middle French, and so forth. In other words, people in Britain speaking non-English languages would have been fairly common in the twelfth century.

Likewise, people in foreign dress would have been fairly common as well. It is slightly puzzling that William describes their clothing as being of an “unknown material,” but we can perhaps excuse this as an embellishment.

ABOVE: Village sign out side Woolpit depicting the Green Children of Woolpit, erected in 1977

The children’s green skin: a symptom of hypochromic anemia?

At first it may seem strange that William and Ralph both describe the children as green, but even this is not so unusual as it might seem, since there is a fairly common medical condition known as hypochromic anemia which can cause the skin of those suffering from it to turn a pallid green color. Acquired hypochromic anemia often results from a Vitamin B6 deficiency.

William of Newburgh tells us that, when the children were first discovered, they refused to eat for days until they were nearly fainting with hunger. Furthermore, both authors agree that at least the boy was very sickly. If the children discovered at Woolpit had been wandering through the wilderness for a long time and had not been eating a very nutritious diet, it makes sense that they would be suffering from a vitamin deficiency.

Hypochromic anemia can be combated by eating a nutritious diet. William of Newburgh and Ralph of Coggeshall agree that, after the children started eating normal foods, their green coloration faded and their skin turned to a normal color. This strongly suggests that the children were merely suffering from hypochromic anemia or a similar condition and, after they started eating a more nutritious diet, the condition went away.

How normal these children were

What is also important to recognize is just how normal these children were aside from their green skin. William of Newburgh and Ralph of Coggeshall tell us that the boy and the girl recognized broad beans as food, that they were both able to learn English, that they recognized themselves as siblings. Even the land where they say the children claimed to have come from is clearly culturally similar to western Europe.

William tells us that the children came from a land where some form of Christianity was practiced, where Saint Martin of Tours was held in special reverence, and where there were churches. Both authors tell us that the children were both baptized, which seems to suggest they had some concept of what baptism meant. William tells us that some people in this land apparently herded sheep and Ralph tells us that they herded cattle. Based on all these details, the land that these children came from sounds a lot more like some place in medieval western Europe than an alien planet.

Furthermore, it is important to note just how easily the surviving girl is described as having acclimated to English life. Ralph of Coggeshall tells us that the girl worked as a servant for many years in Richard de Calne’s household, which suggests that she understood the concept of work in exchange for food and shelter.

William of Newburgh explicitly tells us that, once she was grown, the girl “nec in modico a nostri generis feminis discrepate,” which means “she differed in no way from the women of our nation.” He goes on to tell us that she married a man from King’s Lynn in Norfolk and that he had heard she was still living there only a few years prior, apparently completely acclimated to the English way of life.

Judging from all these details, these children sound a lot more like normal, foreign children from someplace somewhere in medieval western Europe than aliens from another planet, fairies from the world beyond, or time travelers from another era.

ABOVE: Illustration from 1879 by the English illustrator Randolph Caldecott depicting a scene from the story “Babes in the Wood” which is sometimes conflated with the story of the Green Children of Woolpit

The “Land of Saint Martin”?

Now we return to the story of the land the children came from. This is the only part of the story that is really strange in any way. However, we must remember that, even in the case of Ralph’s account, which he claims to have gotten by Richard de Calne, we are hearing about this land through a third-hand report; Ralph (at least allegedly) heard the story from Richard de Calne, who heard it from the girl herself. There are plenty of points along the way for someone to have gotten things mixed up.

Furthermore, the ultimate source of the whole story is supposedly a young girl who supposedly lived in this land when she was even younger. It is easy to see how the land where she came from and the story of how she got to Woolpit could have gotten jumbled up and romanticized in her mind, especially with all the villagers apparently regarding her and her brother as so bizarre and extraordinary.

Conclusion

My guess is that there probably really were two foreign children found outside the village of Woolpit with a greenish tint to their skin due to malnutrition, that they subsisted on beans for a while before learning to eat normal food, and that the boy died shortly after being baptized. I think, however, that the story about the land they came from is a confabulation, perhaps resulting from a misremembrance by the girl of the land of her childhood.

I do not think we can ultimately know where the children really came from, but I think we can say with confidence it was some country in western Europe or in the British Isles. They clearly did not come from another planet or from the land of the fairies or anything silly like that. Likewise, I think it is not possible for us to know exactly how the children arrived in Woolpit, but I think it is perhaps clear that they spent a great deal of time wandering and it is perhaps possible that they may have been led to the village by the sound of church bells.