This is a post about a Medieval folktale that has come to be known as “the Green Children of Woolpit”. It’s also about how sources from the different past can be interpreted in such wildly different ways.
Here is what the two Medieval sources dating from about 1189 and 1220 roughly agree upon about what happened:.
Sometime in the mid-12th century during the anarchy of the reign of King Stephen, two strange siblings appeared in the English villiage of Woolpit, an old settlement whose name derives from “wolf-pit,” literally a pit to catch wolves. The young children were speaking gibberish, and their clothes were made of an unknown fabric. Moreover, their skin was tinged with a green color.
According to the Medieval author Ralph of Coggeshall, the youngsters refused to eat anything until they encountered green beans, which they consumed readily. Eventually, one of Woolpit’s authorities saw to it that the children were baptized, and taught them English. Once they learned to communicate, they told of coming from a land with eternal twighlight, where the sun never shone. They were tending their father’s cattle and followed a sound (like church bells, says one source. And through a cave, says another).
The boy died young, but Ralph writes that the girl grew up, lost her green color, and married one of the villagers.
How to interpret? We can eliminate the explanation that the kids were space aliens, but that has been one idea. Others include a Celtic twist, with the cave, the twilight lands, and the color green appearing in other Medieval legends. Some folklorists want to merge the story with a common Early Modern motif of “the Babes in the Woods,” like Hansel and Gretel. The historical interpretation has been that the siblings came from either Wales or Flanders (both areas of common immigration) whose skin had turned green from some sort of illness — chlorosis can be caused by severe anemia and can turn skin green.
We are on much firmer ground when we talk about the blue-skinned folks from Kentucky, but that is a post for another day!
Sources: Thanks, @katiemaecrochet for the idea for this post! “Historic UK,” @www.historic-uk.com, “The Green Children of Woolpit,” Ben Johnson. @medievalists.net, “The green children of Woolpit: going past the skin-deep explanations of a Medieval legend,” Timothy R Jones, 08/2018. Wikipedia.
