In the 12th century, long before printed newspapers or formal police records, two medieval chroniclers, William of Newburgh and Ralph of Coggeshall, described an event so strange that it has survived more than eight hundred years. According to both accounts, two young children were found wandering near the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England. Their skin was green. Their clothes were made of an unknown fabric. They spoke a language no one recognized. And yet the event was recorded not as legend, but as fact, witnessed by local farmers and preserved by two independent historians.
The children were discovered near the village’s wolf pits, deep traps used to protect livestock. Frightened and disoriented, they cried in a language that startled the harvesters who found them. When brought into the village, locals tried to feed them, but the children refused all food except raw broad beans, which they ate ravenously. This detail appears in both Newburgh’s Historia Rerum Anglicarum and Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum, two of the most respected monastic chronicles of their time.
The children’s appearance was described consistently: their skin had a greenish tint, their hair was normal in color and texture, and their facial features resembled those of other children in the region. Their clothing, however, was made from a material that witnesses did not recognize, described only as “strange” and unlike English cloth. Over time, as the children lived among the villagers and adopted English foods, their green color gradually faded.
As the children learned English, their story began to emerge. They claimed to come from a place called “St. Martin’s Land,” a region where the sun never shone, where twilight was the brightest part of the day, and where everyone was the same color as they had been. They described their homeland as separated from the world by a large river or boundary, and said they had followed their flock into a cavern or tunnel before losing their way and emerging in Woolpit. Every detail they offered came through direct testimony recorded by Coggeshall, who personally spoke with the surviving child, by then, a young woman living a normal English life.
The boy, according to the chronicles, died soon after arriving in Woolpit. The girl survived, adapted to English society, and was eventually baptized. She worked for a local household and later married a man from King’s Lynn. Her testimony remained the primary source of information about their origin.
Over the centuries, scholars have debated what the medieval writers actually recorded. Some theories suggest the children were Flemish refugees fleeing conflict, their greenish tint caused by malnutrition or chronic anemia. Others propose that they may have been suffering from chlorosis, a condition historically known as “the green sickness.” Yet these explanations do little to address the more unusual aspects of the case: the unknown language, the refusal of all food except raw beans, and the strange clothing. And none explain why two separate chroniclers, writing decades apart, treated the event with solemn, factual seriousness instead of dismissing it as folklore.
More speculative interpretations point toward folkloric or symbolic meaning, perhaps remnants of older English fairy traditions or allegories about outsiders entering a closed rural society. But William of Newburgh, known for debunking myths and rejecting fanciful tales, stated plainly that he included the account only because it was “first-hand and credible.” Ralph of Coggeshall, who had access to local witnesses, insisted his version came from direct conversation with people who were there.
What remains today is a mystery suspended between medieval documentation and modern interpretation. Two children were found. Their skin was green. Their language was unknown. Villagers saw them, fed them, raised them. Chroniclers recorded the event without embellishment. Beyond those facts, every explanation struggles to fit the details without leaving gaps.
The village of Woolpit still bears references to the legend: signposts, local folklore, and historical plaques that acknowledge the most unusual event in its long history. The fields are quiet now, but the record survives, one of the strangest, best-documented anomalies from medieval England, passed down not as a fairy tale but as a witnessed account that still resists a simple answer.
Sources & Further Reading:
- The Green Children Linguistic Theory: A Historical Explanation for a Medieval Mystery
– William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum (12th century)
– Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum (12th–13th century)
– Suffolk historical records and Woolpit parish accounts
– Modern analyses by medieval scholars and cultural historians
(One of many historical mysteries shared by Headcount Coffee — exploring the strange corners of history, one cup at a time.)
