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The legend of the Green Children of Woolpit concerns two children of unusual skin colour who reportedly appeared in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England, sometime in the 12th century, possibly during the reign of King Stephen (r.

The children, found to be brother and sister, were of generally normal appearance except for the green colour of their skin. Eventually, they learned to eat other food and lost their green colour, but the boy was sickly and died around the time of his and his sister's baptism. After she learned to speak English, the girl explained that she and her brother had come from a land where the sun never shone, and the light was like twilight. According to one version of the story, she said that everything there was green; according to another, she said it was called Saint Martin's Land. Between then and their rediscovery in the mid-19th century, the green children seem to surface only in a passing mention in William Camden's Britannia in 1586, and in two works from the early 17th century, Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy and Bishop Francis Godwin's fantastical The Man in the Moone. Two approaches have dominated explanations of the story of the green children: that it is a folktale describing an imaginary encounter with the inhabitants of another world, perhaps subterranean or extraterrestrial, or that it presents a real event in a garbled manner. The story was praised as an ideal fantasy by the English anarchist poet and critic Herbert Read in his English Prose Style, first published in 1928, and provided the inspiration for his only novel, The Green Child, published in 1935.

This version of the story was known to local author and folk singer Bob Roberts, who says in his 1978 book A Slice of Suffolk "I was told there are still people in Woolpit who are 'descended from the green children', but nobody would tell me who they were!"

William of Newburgh—reluctantly, suggests Cohen—includes the story of the green children in his account of a largely unified, homogenous England.

The English anarchist poet and critic Herbert Read describes the story of the green children in his English Prose Style, first published in 1928, as "the norm to which all types of fantasy should conform". Author John Macklin includes an account in his 1965 book, Strange Destinies, of two green children who arrived in the Spanish village of Banjos in 1887. Many details of the story very closely resemble the accounts given of the Woolpit children, such as the name of Ricardo de Calno, the mayor of Banjos who befriends the two children, strikingly similar to Richard de Calne. It is clear that Macklin's story is an invention inspired by the green children of Woolpit, particularly as there is no record of any Spanish village called Banjos. The green children tale was the inspiration for J. Australian novelist and poet Randolph Stow uses the account of the green children in his 1980 novel The Girl Green as Elderflower; the green girl is the source for the title character, here a blonde girl with green eyes. In 1996 English poet Glyn Maxwell wrote a verse play based on the story of the green children, Wolfpit (the earlier name for Woolpit), which was performed by the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in that year. The tale has been the basis for several 20th- and 21st-century children's books and stories, including Judith Stinton's Tom's Tale from 1983, a trilogy by Mark Bartholomew in 2006 and 2007 and The Green Children of Woolpit by J.

The green children are the subject of a 1990 community opera performed by children and adults, composed by Nicola LeFanu with a libretto by Crossley-Holland.

Quick Facts

• Australian novelist and poet Randolph Stow uses the account of the green children in his 1980 novel The Girl Green as Elderflower; the green girl is the source for the title character, here a blonde girl with green eyes.
• Two approaches have dominated explanations of the story of the green children: that it is a folktale describing an imaginary encounter with the inhabitants of another world, perhaps subterranean or extraterrestrial, or that it presents a real event in a garbled manner.
• The children, found to be brother and sister, were of generally normal appearance except for the green colour of their skin.
• According to one version of the story, she said that everything there was green; according to another, she said it was called Saint Martin's Land.
• Many details of the story very closely resemble the accounts given of the Woolpit children, such as the name of Ricardo de Calno, the mayor of Banjos who befriends the two children, strikingly similar to Richard de Calne.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Green children of Woolpit". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.