Abby Connolly
If you love old tales and legends, you may have heard of the Green Children of Woolpit. If not, buckle up because it’s a very bizarre story.
Legend has it that long ago, during the reign of the English King Stephen around 1150, residents in the village of Woolpit shockingly discovered two small children with bizarre green skin.
The story of the children has been chronicled by two different men, historian William of Newburgh and abbot Ralph of Coggeshall. They both told a similar story about the two children who had the village shaken.
The children were first seen by villagers when they crawled out of the pits residents had dug to catch wolves, which is how the village of Woolpit got its name.
It was a young boy and girl, who they eventually discovered were brother and sister. What had the villagers more startled other than their crawling out of a pit was their green skin.
Villagers attempted to get more information from the children, but they spoke a foreign language that sounded like gibberish. According to Ralph of Coggeshall’s writing, the children were taken to the nearby home of Sir Richard de Calne.
Sir Richard attempted to feed the children, but they refused just about everything for days. That is until they discovered green beans growing in his garden and ate them straight from the dirt.
The children stayed with Sir Richard for a few years, eventually learning to eat other kinds of food and how to speak English. Because of their new diets, their green skin eventually faded to a normal color.
Once they had finally begun to understand the English language, they were able to communicate that they came from a land called St. Martin and were unsure of how they ended up in Woolpit.
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