On an otherwise normal day around 1150, residents of the English village of Woolpit made a startling discovery on the edge of town — two small children with green skin. Not only did the children look strange, but they also spoke a strange language and seemed repulsed by most food.
Taken in by the villagers, the odd pair eventually lost the green tone in their skin and learned to speak English. They claimed that they came from a distant land called St. Martin where people rarely encountered sunlight.
The Green Children Of Woolpit Make Their First Appearance
The story of the Green Children of Woolpit was recounted by two different chroniclers: the 13th-century historian William of Newburgh and the 12th-century abbot Ralph of Coggeshall. But Newburgh and Coggeshall both tell a similar story of how two green children appeared in the village of Woolpit.
As the tale goes, the two children were discovered by villagers around the year 1150. Historic UK reports that they were spotted crawling out of one of the pits meant for catching wolves that gave the village its name. (Woolpit in Old English is wulf-pytt.)
Most startling of all, they were green.
“During harvest, while the reapers were employed in gathering in the produce of the fields, two children, a boy and a girl, completely green in their persons, and clad in garments of a strange color, and unknown materials, emerged from these [wolf pits],” Newburgh recounted in his Historia rerum Anglicarum (History of English Affairs) from 1220.
Not only were the children green and clad in strange clothing, but they also seemed to speak gibberish. Coggeshall reports that they were taken to the home of Sir Richard de Calne, who lived nearby. But though de Calne offered the green children food, they refused to eat anything.
After a few days of this, the Green Children of Woolpit discovered some green beans growing in de Calne’s garden and eagerly gobbled them up. Before long, they reportedly took to eating the food the villagers offered them as well, and began to lose the green tinge of their skin.
Though the little boy grew sick and died, the girl seemed to flourish under the villagers’ care. Before long, she mastered the English language — and told the people of Woolpit a strange story about their homeland.
The Legend Behind The Land Of St. Martin
The girl, who took on the name Agnes Barre according to Ancient Origins, eventually told the villagers that she and her brother had come from a place called “St. Martin.” But she wasn’t sure how they’d ended up in Woolpit.
“On a certain day, when we were feeding our father’s flocks in the fields, we heard a great sound, such as we are now accustomed to hear at St. Edmund’s, when the bells are chiming,” she said, “and whilst listening to the sound in admiration, we became on a sudden, as it were, entranced, and found ourselves among you in the fields where you were reaping.”