Green Children Of Woolpit

2023 Author: Adelina Croftoon | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-07-30 23:26

The story of Woolpit's green children is often attributed to the inexplicable oddities of medieval chronicles.

Even though medieval historiography contains a lot of inexplicable and even supernatural stories, the story of how completely green children were found in a field near Woolpit in Suffolk in the middle of the 12th century, as researchers repeatedly emphasize, in this case Catherine Briggs, “is extremely convincing and detailed .

The first one tells this story William (William) of Newburgh (1136-1198), canon of the monastery at Newburgh in Yorkshire. His description is especially appreciated, since Wilhelm is considered almost the founder of the critical method in history and a sober historian who will not write anything without really good reason.

To this occasion, Wilhelm devotes a chapter in the first book of his History of England:

“It seems wrong to ignore the unheard-of miracle that, as is well known, took place in England during the reign of King Stephen. I doubted for a long time about it, about which many argued, but to believe in a case that has no rational basis, or at least extremely mysterious, seemed ridiculous to me; nevertheless, at last, under the weight of so many and so knowledgeable witnesses, I was forced to believe and wonder at an incident that I was unable to comprehend or resolve by any powers of reason.

There is a village in East Anglia, said to be four or five miles from the beautiful monastery of our blessed King and Martyr Edmund; near this place are very ancient caves, which are called "Wolfpitts", which means "Wolf Pits" in English, and which gave the name to the nearby village.

During the harvest, when the reapers were busy with the harvest, two children, completely green in body and dressed in robes of a strange color and of unknown material, came out of these depressions. While they wandered in amazement through the fields, they were seized by the reapers and taken to the village, and many people came to see such an unprecedented sight, and they were kept for several days without food.

But it so happened that when they were almost exhausted by hunger and at the same time could not find pleasant for themselves and support themselves with the food that was offered to them, that someone brought beans from the field, which they immediately grabbed with liveliness, but not finding beans in the hollow stalk, we wept bitterly. Seeing this, one of those standing there took the beans out of the pods and offered them to the children, who immediately grabbed them and ate them with pleasure.

With this food they sustained themselves for many months until they learned how to eat bread. Finally, they gradually changed their original color as a result of the intake of our food and became like us, and also learned our language. Some prudent people thought it appropriate for the children to receive the ordinance of baptism, which was done accordingly. The boy, who appeared to be the youngest, survived baptism, but died briefly and prematurely; the girl was in good health and did not in the least differ from the women of our country.

After, she is said to have married in Lynn, and lived for several more years after that, at least as they say. Also, after they learned our language, they allegedly answered the question where they came from: "We live in the country of St. Martin, who enjoys special respect in the country in which we were born."

When they were asked further where this land is and how they got from there to here, they answered: “We do not know anything about this, but only remember that one day, when we were grazing our father's flocks in the field, we heard a strong sound, which is now heard from the church of St. Edmund at the ringing of bells; and while we listened with admiration to this sound, we forgot and came to our senses already in your fields, when you were harvesting.

When they were asked whether they believe in Christ in their country and whether the sun rises there, they answered that their land is Christian and there are churches, but, they said: “The sun does not rise over our compatriots. Our earth is only slightly illuminated by its rays. We are content with only twilight, which you have before sunrise or follow sunset. Also, some brightly lit land is visible not very far from us and we are separated from it by a very wide river”.

These and many other things are too numerous to dwell on, they told the curious. Let everyone say what he sees fit and reason about it according to his abilities. I have no regrets recording an event so amazing and wonderful."

William of Newburgh History of England, I.27

The second story about this case leads Ralph Koggshalskyth in the "English Chronicle", completed in the 1220s. The author is the abbot of the Koggeskhel monastery in Essex, which is relatively close to the described places. His story does not have a chronological reference, as in Wilhelm's, but it refers to receiving information from a person with whom one of these green children subsequently lived and served him:

Another amazing incident happened in Suffolk, near St. Mary in Wolfpits. At the entrance to the cave, which is there, the locals found a boy and his sister, all of whom were the same as the rest of the people, but they differed in their color. skin from all the people of the inhabited world, since the entire surface of their bodies was green.

Nobody understood their language. They were taken, as a rare oddity, to the home of a certain knight, Sir Richard De Calne, in Wykes, and they wept bitterly. Bread and other products were placed in front of them, but they did not touch anything, although they were tormented by the greatest hunger, as the girl later admitted. Finally, when it was time to cut the beans, and when the stalks of the beans were brought into the house, they showed signs with the greatest liveliness to be given to them. When they were given the stems, they opened the stems instead of the pods, thinking that the beans were inside the stems and, not finding them there, started crying again.

Those who were present opened the pods and showed them the beans. They ate beans with the greatest delight and did not taste any other food for a long time. The boy was always weak and depressed and soon died. The girl, on the other hand, was in good health and, soon starting to eat various foods, completely lost her green color and restored a full-blooded appearance to her entire body. After that, she was reborn in the baptismal font and lived for many years in the service of this knight (as I have repeatedly heard from him and from his family) and was famous for her licentious and bad behavior.

She was often asked about the people in her country and she claimed that all the land inhabiting her was green, and that they had no sun, but only the degree of illumination that occurs after sunset. When she was asked how she got to this country with the aforementioned boy, she said that when they followed the grazing cattle, they entered a certain cave and, entering, heard the delightful sound of bells.

Fascinated by his pleasantness, they wandered around the cave for a long time until they came to its exit. When they left it, they fainted due to the strong light of the sun and the extraordinary temperature of the air. And so they lay for a long time. Horrified by the sounds made by those who found them, they wanted to escape, but could not find the entrance to the cave before they were caught."

Ralph Coggshaelsky "The English Chronicle"

The stories do look oddly believable indeed. The scene of action and the general "plot" of the story coincide in them. Unusual details, such as the one that the children did not know that the peas are not in the stalk, but in the bean pod, only give them credibility, since it seems that such details can be specially invented and ensured into the works of authors who did not know about each other. … At the same time, both authors are independent in their story. Ralph even specifically refers to Sir Richard de Calne, from whom, according to him, he himself has repeatedly heard about these children.

However, the feature of both stories, which is very embarrassing at the first reading and attracts attention, is quite typical for medieval chroniclers and does not serve as an additional argument in favor of the reliability of the story. We are talking about links to obtaining information from witnesses of the incident. The medieval writer has always been anxious to confirm his story with the authority of a witness.

Even the biographies of the saints are filled with the names and exact dates of the miracles that the saints performed and the obligatory indication of where the witness of these miracles lives, so that he can be found and questioned. This is a common place for medieval historiography in general, and if you trust each such evidence, then we will have to completely revise our picture of the world.

I would like to say a few words about the fame of William of Newburgh as a picky, critically thinking author of a dry and realistic chronicle. In The History of England, there are also quite typical folklore stories of other encounters with mythological creatures such as the revenants (V.24) or visits to the faerie hills (I.28) - and all these for William are stories derived from trustworthy people like he's writing.

One way or another, this story, however, was soon forgotten. It was not remembered about it until the end of the 16th century, when the English historian William Camden mentioned the message of William of Newburgh, writing that this story can cause nothing but laughter.

In the 1610 Paris print edition of William of Newburgh's History of England, the publisher added Ralph Coggeshall's version of the green child story, linking the two descriptions together for the first time.

The first interpretations of this story appeared in the 17th century and, oddly enough, turned out to be the most consonant with our century. The Oxford scientist William Burton (1577-1640) in his Anatomy of Melancholy did not prove that the rest of the planets known at that time were inhabited, but also cites the case of green children as confirmation, referring to William of Newburgh, saying that they could have fallen from the sky …

Bishop Francis Godwin (by the way, a friend of William Camden) in the "first English sci-fi fiction" "The Man in the Moon" mentions the work of William and inserts into the description of the inhabitants of the Moon so many details similar to the description of the history of green children and their homeland that it does not remain doubt that he is referring to this particular plot.

After that, the history of green children disappears from the field of view of researchers for a couple of centuries, only to reappear in The Faerie Mythology by William Keightley, who, in the second edition of his work in 1850, included a description of Ralph of Coggeshaelsky and gave a retelling of William's message. William did not comment on them, but the very inclusion in a work devoted to mythology should imply that the nature of this story was seen by the author as mythological. The 19th century and the first half of the 20th century interpret these messages almost entirely in the spirit of a folklore and mythological story about a meeting with a faerie.

From the second half of the 20th century, as the English historian John Clarke, who devoted an article to the issue of Woolpit's green children, admits, a period of "obsession with the Unexplained" begins. Green children are included in numerous collections of mysterious and unexplained incidents, and, as in the 17th century, theories about the unearthly origin of children appear.

Recently, only one realistic explanation has been proposed, according to which the children found were members of a family of Flemish emigrants who, due to some incident, possibly violence against emigrants, were left homeless.

This explains their incomprehensible language. "Saint Martin's Land" was just the village of Fordham St. Martin, 8 miles from Woolpit, where they were found, and their skin color was attributed to a rare disease "chlorosis", which, however, is recorded only in discredited medical treatises of the 19th century, but by no means not in real life.

As you can easily see, the attitude towards the legend of the green children of Woolpit developed in three directions. In the first two, descriptions of medieval historians were considered to reliably convey what happened in the 12th century near Woolpith. But explanatory theories diverged from this point in two directions - realistic (Flemish children, malnutrition, some kind of disease that causes skin color) or fantastic, in which these children were called inhabitants of a parallel universe or another planet.

The third trend referred to this story initially as folklore material, denying its right to claim to describe actual events. It was one of the many encounters with the fabulous peoples that permeate the mythology of the British Isles.

It is not for us to put an end to this story. Each theory has its own strengths and weaknesses. Even among those who declare children to be aliens, since they explain everything in the legend down to the smallest detail and the only thing they lack is common sense. It seems the most common sense not to try to explain this legend, but to accept it in all its beautiful and inexplicable fullness.