One of the strangest tales out of old England comes from the turbulent reign of King Stephen, which lasted from 1135 to 1154.
Stephen was the grandson of William the Conqueror; his mother, Adela of Normandy, was William's daughter. When the legitimate heir to the throne, William Adelin (son of Henry I) died in the "sinking of the White Ship" in 1120, it set up a succession crisis as Henry had no other legitimate sons. So when Henry died in 1135, Stephen seized the throne.
The problem was, Henry did have a legitimate daughter, Matilda, who basically said "Oh, hell no" (only in Norman French). And honestly, Matilda's claim to the throne was better, according to the law of primogeniture. But (1) Matilda was a woman, which back then was for some reason a serious problem, and (2) she was arrogant to the point of pissing off just about everyone she came into contact with. Personality-wise, though, Stephen was not a lot better. So they squared off against each other -- and thus began the First English Civil War.
The result was what always happens; years of back-and-forth-ing, and the ones who suffered most were the common people who just wanted to survive and put food on the table. It wasn't helped by the fact that both Stephen and Matilda seemed to excel most at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Both of them came close to winning outright more than once, then did something so catastrophically boneheaded that they blew their chance. (If you want an interesting perspective on the war against the backdrop of some entertaining fiction, Ellis Peters's charming Chronicles of Brother Cadfael are set during Stephen's reign.)
Eventually, everyone got fed up with it, including the two principals. In 1153 Stephen more or less capitulated, and agreed that if Matilda would give up her claim to the throne and cease hostilities, he'd name her son Henry (the future King Henry II) as his heir. Treaty signed. Stephen only lived another two years, Henry became king, and the Plantagenet dynasty was founded.
So it was a mess, and in fact is sometimes called "the Anarchy," which isn't far off the mark. And it was from during this chaos that we have the odd story of the "Green Children of Woolpit."
Woolpit is a town in Suffolk. Its curious name has to do with wolves, not sheep; it was originally Wulfpytt -- a pit for catching wolves. In any case, some time during the war, when things were at their worst, two children showed up in Woolpit, a boy and a girl. They spoke no English (or French either, for that matter), only a strange language no one in the area recognized, and refused all food except for raw beans, which they ate voraciously.
Also, their skin was green.
Naturally, this raised more than a few eyebrows, but they were taken in by one Sir Richard de Calne, a nobleman of Norman descent who lived near Woolpit. The boy died soon afterward, but the girl lived, was baptized with the name of Agnes, and gradually learned to speak English. She adjusted to her new life, although remained "very wanton and impudent," according to one account. When she was able, she told her caretakers that she and her brother had come from a land where the Sun never shone, and the sky was a perpetual twilight. Everything there was green, she said.
The place was known as "St. Martin's Land."
The brother and sister had been herding their father's cattle, she told them, and had heard the sound of cathedral bells coming from a cave in a hillside. Curious, they entered the cave, at first losing their way, but eventually coming out near where they were found in Woolpit.
Two contemporaneous writers, Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh, both give accounts of the Green Children, which substantially agree. Over time the green color of Agnes's skin gradually faded until she looked more or less normal. She eventually found work as a servant, but rose in status when she married Richard Barre, a scholar and justice who worked for both Henry II and Richard I. The details of her later life are unknown.
So, what's going on, here?
First, it seems pretty certain that something real happened -- i.e., that it's not just a tall tale. There are too many apparently independent references to the story to discount it entirely. Needless to say, though, I'm not inclined to believe that they were aliens, or some of the Fair Folk, or any of the other fanciful quasi-explanations I've heard. It's been suggested that the green color of their skin was due to hypochromic anemia (also known as chlorosis), which can be caused by chronic iron deficiency, which would explain why the coloration went away in Agnes's skin once she had a better diet.
It's also been suggested that their lack of knowledge of English was because they were Flemish. Both Stephen and Matilda had invited in Flemish mercenaries to help them in the war, and some of these settled in England permanently. It might be that they were the children of some of these Flemish settlers.
But.
If the cause of the green coloration really was malnourishment, the condition should have been much more widespread, because as I noted earlier, during the First English Civil War just about everyone was starving. And hypochromic anemia doesn't really make you green, it makes your skin waxy, yellowish, and pale. The children's green color was striking enough to merit emphasis, which suggests strongly that it was something no one who saw the children had ever seen before. As far as their being Flemish, their guardian, Sir Richard de Calne, was a well-educated nobleman; both of the principle chroniclers, Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh, were multilingual. There is no way that if the children had been speaking Flemish, none of them would have recognized it, especially given how many Flemish soldiers and merchants were in England at the time.
Plus, if all the children had done was go through a cave in a hill and come out of the other side, they can't have been far from home. We're talking Suffolk, in flat East Anglia (Suffolk's highest elevation is only 128 meters!), not the freakin' Rocky Mountains, here. Why did both of the children think they'd been transported far away -- far enough away that they couldn't just walk back across the hill and then home? (It's possible, of course, that they had been abused and didn't want to go home. But still. Surely if all they'd done was cross a few hills, someone would have recognized them as locals.)
So the prosaic, rational explanation of the story doesn't itself hold up to scrutiny.
Likewise, claims that the story of the Green Children was a moralistic tale invented as a social commentary on "the threat posed by outsiders to the unity of the Christian community," as historian Elizabeth Freeman put it. seem as far-fetched as suggestions that they were aliens. As I said earlier, the independent accounts of the children, as well as their interactions with real historical figures, indicate that they did exist -- whoever they were, and wherever they'd come from.
So we're left with a mystery that I doubt will ever be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
Understand that I'm not advocating for any kind of paranormal explanation; whatever did happen back in twelfth-century Suffolk, I'm sure it had a rational, scientific cause. I'm just saying we don't know what it is. Odd to think, though, that since Richard Barre and Agnes had children, very likely there are people in Suffolk (and those with ancestry there) who descend from the surviving "Green Child."
If you're one of them, consider where that drop of your blood might have come from. And let me know if you ever find yourself with a craving for raw beans.
