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The remarkable history of the green children of Woolpit was first documented

by two medieval English chroniclers- Ralph, Abbot of Coggeshall, and

William of Newburgh. One day during the reign of King Stephen, 1135-1154

AD, two children were found weeping and wandering, lost and forlorn, in the

great pits used to trap wolves at the village of Woolpit, in Suffolk. They caused

great amazement among the villagers, but this was due not to their behavior

and their unintelligible dialect but to their appearance, for their clothes, their

eyes, and most strikingly, their skin was green. They were taken to the house

of local landowner Sir Richard de Calne, which became their home; but

despite all attempts to feed them, for quite a time after their discovery these

strange children refused to eat anything other than green beans. Sadly, the

younger the two, the boy, died less than a year later, but the other child, a girl,

grew strong and spent the rest of her life in the area.

Over the years, the green tinge to her skin gradually vanished, and when she reached maturity she married a man from
King's Lynn in Norfolk. She also learnt English, and was eventually able to inform the villagers that she and the boy had
come from a country called St Martin's Land, where there was no sun, only a permanent hazy twilight. They had been
following their flocks when they had entered an underground passageway and stumbled out, on the other side, into the
bright sunlight of Woolpit.

Many explanations have been offered for this curious story. Because of the children's green skin, thought to be the color
of fairies, and their preference of green beans (the food of the dead, according to Celtic lore). Some researchers have
discounted their history as merely a charming folktale. Others have linked it with England's traditional Green Man, a leafy
supernatural entity personifying the fertility and the rebirth of spring. The Green Man is worshipped, and/or believed in
Pagan and in Wicca beliefs. It has even been suggested that the children had originated from a mysterious subterranean
world present beneath the surface of the earth and lacking sunlight, or from some parallel dimension through which they
had accidentally stepped into our own.

In recent times, a much more literal, sober interpretation has also been put forward for consideration. During the 1980's,
investigator Paul Harris visited Woolpit and learnt that local people generally believe that the story derives from a legend
concerning a medieval Norfolk earl who was guardian to two young children. The earl tried unsuccessfully to poison the
children with arsenic and then abandoned them in Waymand Wood, in the area of Thetfor Forest on the Norfolk-Suffolk
border. Here they would surely have died, thus enabling him to take control of the estate that they were due to inherit when
they reached adulthood. According to the Woolpit people, these probably became the green children who were later
found, still alive but disorientated and ill. Worth noting here is that arsenic poisoning can cause chlorosis, in which the skin
turned green. So too can anemia, result of malnutrition, from which the abandoned youngsters were likely to have been
suffering. A diet-related origin for their green skin would also explain why the girl's complexion reverted to a normal color
once she began to thrive on proper food

Harris believes that the story's other key portions have straightforward explanations too. For instance, a few miles north-
west of Woolpit is a village called Fornham St. Martin, which could explain the identity of "St Martin's Land." Further north
is Thetford Forest, whose dark interior would certainly seem twilit and sunless to two young children abandoned in its
depths. The forest also contain many Neolithic flint mines and associated passages. Perhaps the youngsters wandered
into one of them, which led to Woolpit. Furthermore, in the twelfth century most people did not travel vary far, so the dialect
of children from a distance village may indeed have sounded strange to Woolpit's inhabitants.

There is one final but intriguing twist to the tale of the Woolpit green children. An almost identical story is on record from
nineteenth century Spain, dating from August 1887 and set in the Catalonian village of Banjos. Indeed, apart from the
difference in the locality and time, the only notable discrepancy between the two stories is that in the Spanish version the
girl dies too, after about five years. Even their liking for beans is mentioned, and to add coincidence to coincidence, the
nobleman who cares for them after their discovery is named as Senor Ricardo da Calno.