The green children of Woolpit

The green children of Woolpit.

Sometime, at the end of the 12th century, Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh wrote how two children with green skin arrived in the village of Woolpit one summer.

Ralph was abbot at Coggeshall monastery and William was a canon in Yorkshire. They tell how during the harvest, the villagers of Woolpit found the children, a girl and a boy, at the entrance to the village.

They both had green skin and did not speak the dialect of the area.

Also, their clothes looked unfamiliar.

The children were taken to the house of a Richard de Calne and they refused to eat for days in a row until they found some raw grains, which they eagerly ate.

The children gradually adapted to normal food and their skin lost its green huethe but unfortunately the boy died. The girl lived and was baptized.

After she learned to speak English, she told that she comes from a sunless country with twilight light.

The story is strange and the medieval texts are very vague in details. What did the children have? What disease makes the skin green? Hmmm…but what if they were…no, nevermind. 👽?