Took this snapshot on our way home yesterday, and quite near Woolpit, which leads me on to this short blog. I find I shall have to tell the story of the Green Children of Woolpit after all.
I'll keep it short. The story was documented by William of Newburgh and Ralph of Coggeshall, both Churchmen and near contemporaries of the story, which they both give as fact and having recently occurred. Both date the story to the reign of King Steven (1135 - 1154 a.d.). They state that at that time two children, the girl about ten and the boy a few years younger were found at the entrance to some old pits (presumably the wolf pits) just outside the town of Woolpit. They were of normal appearance apart from the fact that their skin was green. They were hungry but would eat no food offered, until they saw some green beans, which they ate hungrily. They spoke a totally unknown language and did not understand English. The boy did not thrive and died about a year later. The girl thrived, learned English, and later claimed to have come from St. Martin's land (not identified, although she described it well). She is said to have eventually married 'a man from King's Lynn' (in Norfolk). The family of Earl Ferrers claim her as an ancestress.
That's the short form of the story. There are lots of theories about them, from being abandoned children of Flemish workers to aliens from outer or inner space (little green men ???).
My own idea (a fairly prosaic one, of course) is that they were probably children of very early gypsey immigrants, who claimed to have come from Egypt, hence the name gypsies, but more probably came overland from India, and would have had an 'olive' complexion, seen by the English as greenish. Prosaic (as I warned) but possible.
3 comments:
Thanks Mike. I like your interpretation of where the "green" came from.
If I was a Martian on a strange planet I would adapt my origins to 'St.Martin's Land'.
It has been suggested that their parents were dyers who specialised in green cloth and they were completely soaked in the dye-stuff from treading the vats. The famous green cloth of Lincoln comes to mind but I think despite huge dialectal variation that they would not have been taken for foreigners. Apparently the girl's skin colouration faded back to 'normal' over the years. She became known as Agnes Barre but whether this was her maiden name, assumed name or married name I do not know.
I just checked the possibility of Lincoln as the home of the Green Children. There was a St. Martin's church extant in Lincoln from the C.11th. to Victorian times, and of course a St. Martin's Lane running by it.
Could their address have been given as St. Martin's Lane rather than St.Martin's Land?
Considering Lincoln was in the Danelaw and Suffolk in Anglia at the time, their dialect could have been very different from Suffolk speech.
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