In the book Chronicum Anglicanum (“Chronicle of England”) by Ralph of Coggeshall and the Historia rerum Anglicarum (“History of English Affairs”) by historian William of Newburgh, there is a fascinating story describing an event that occurred in Woolpit, Suffolk, at some point in the 12th century, during the reign of King Stephen (1135-54) or King Henry II (1154-1189), depending on the version chosen.
Ralph of Coggeshall recounts that he often heard this story from De Calne, an eyewitness, while historian William shares that he believes the story due to “numerous credible witnesses.”
Woolpit is named after the Old English term “wulf-pytt”, or “wolf-pit” in modern English, meaning deep holes used to trap wolves. Legend has it that during one harvest season, two mysterious children, a boy and a girl, suddenly appeared from one of these pits.
They seemed to emerge from nowhere. They spoke an incomprehensible language, wore strange clothing, did not eat or drink, and had green skin. It appeared they did not come from this world.
Who Were They and Where Did They Come From?
The two children seemed to appear from nowhere. (Image: Internet).
The villagers looked at them as if they had never seen anything like it before. It was understandable, given that the two children wore clothing made from strange materials and had green skin. No one could communicate with them due to the language barrier. The children were taken to the home of a local landowner, Sir Richard de Calne.
Feeling alienated and isolated from the world around them, they were very sad and cried for many days. They refused to eat or drink anything offered to them, yet they appeared hungry. Only when someone brought “fresh beans still on the stalk” did both children eat voraciously. They survived on these beans for months. Eventually, they began to eat bread.
As time passed, the boy’s health deteriorated. He succumbed to illness and died. The girl seemed to adapt better to her surroundings.
She gradually lost her green skin and became healthy. She learned English to communicate with society and later even married a local man.
People asked her about her past and where she came from, but everything she said only added to her mystery. She claimed that she and her brother came from “a land without sunlight,” where there was a kind of perpetual twilight. All the inhabitants there had green skin.
She was not sure where her homeland was. However, she remembered that there was another “luminous” land separated from hers by a “wide river.”
It remains unclear how these children appeared in the pit.
The young girl said she and her brother were tending cattle for their father when the herd wandered into a cave. They followed the cattle into the cave and heard bells inside. They wandered in the darkness for a long time until they reached the cave’s mouth and were suddenly blinded by a burst of bright light.
The sunlight and the unusual air temperature exhausted them, forcing them to stop and rest. After that, they heard voices and encountered a group of strange people, which made them run away in fright. However, the children could not find the cave’s exit and were captured.
The two children wore strange clothing and had green skin. (Image: Internet).
Many explanations have been proposed for the mysterious identity of the two children.
Some suggest that the children were immigrants from Flanders (Belgium) who had been persecuted. Their parents were killed, and they had to hide in the woods.
This hypothesis may explain the strange clothing they wore, but it does not account for their incomprehensible language. In fact, locals would have recognized them if they were Flemish.
Others speculate that the cause of their green skin could be due to malnutrition or arsenic poisoning. There was an incident where an uncle allegedly plotted to poison a nephew, but this rumor was never confirmed.
A sign in Woolpit village describing the legend of the two children from the 12th century. (Image: Wikimedia Commons).
What about the children’s strange language and clothing? Many historians believe they could be the children of Flemish immigrants who were killed by King Stephen or King Henry II. Thus, what the villagers of Woolpit perceived as “strange language” could have actually been Dutch.
As Ancient Origins explains, some people argue that the green skin, strange clothing, and incomprehensible language of the children are sure signs that they came from outer space. This hypothesis seems to have first emerged in the 17th century when Robert Burton wrote in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) that the green children of Woolpit “fell from the sky.”
Although there is little evidence to support this hypothesis, there are certainly some overlaps between the story of the green children of Woolpit and modern descriptions of extraterrestrial beings.
Of course, there are also some who claim that the Green Children of Woolpit never existed.
Is it possible that these mysterious children came to our world through a time window, another dimension, or from the underworld? Over the years, many have pondered such questions, attempting to find an explanation for an odd event in distant history.
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