I'm a medieval historian. I've spent the last fifteen years researching unexplained events from 12th century England, and there's one case that absolutely fascinates me. It's documented in two separate medieval chronicles, written by respected historians of the time, and it involves two children who appeared in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk around the year 1150. Now, what makes this case remarkable is that we have independent accounts from two different chroniclers. Walter of Northampton, a canon at Newburgh Priory up in Yorkshire, wrote about it in his Historia rerum Anglicarum around 1189. Robert of Canterbury, an abbot at Coggeshall Abbey, documented it in his Chronicum Anglicanum in the 1220s. These weren't storytellers or entertainers, these were serious medieval scholars recording what they believed to be factual events. According to both accounts, it happened during harvest time, during the reign of King Stephen. That's the period known as The Anarchy, a brutal civil war in the mid-1100s. Workers were out in the fields near Woolpit when they discovered two children beside one of the wolf pits that gave the village its name.
Here's what stopped everyone cold. Both children, a brother and sister, had green skin. Not pale, not sickly looking, but actually green. They wore clothes made from unfamiliar material, and they spoke a language nobody in the village could identify. Not English, not French, not Latin, nothing the locals recognized. The children were taken to the home of Sir Robert de Clare, a local knight who lived about six miles north of Woolpit. This detail comes directly from Robert of Canterbury, who claimed to have heard the story from Robert de Clare himself. That's a direct chain of testimony from the person who actually sheltered these children. When they tried to feed the children, here's where it gets stranger. The children refused everything. Bread, meat, normal food, they wouldn't touch any of it. They went days without eating. Finally, someone brought out raw broad beans. The children saw these beans and immediately started eating them. Just raw beans, straight from the plant. That's all they would consume for quite some time.
Over time, Robert de Clare gradually got them to eat other foods. And here's what's documented in both chronicles, as their diet changed, their green color faded. Their skin slowly returned to a normal, pinkish-white tone. Unfortunately, the boy was sickly from the beginning. He died shortly after they were baptized, cause unknown. The girl survived. She lived with Robert de Clare's household for years, learned to speak English fluently, and eventually she told them where she came from. According to Walter of Northampton's account, she said they came from a land called St. Martin's Land. Robert of Canterbury adds that she said everything there was green. The sun never shone in this place. It was always twilight, neither day nor night, just perpetual dim light. When asked how they arrived in Woolpit, the girl said they'd been herding their father's cattle when they heard a loud noise, like bells ringing. In one version, they entered a cave while following the cattle, became lost in underground passages, and eventually emerged near Woolpit after following the sound of bells from Bury St Edmunds Abbey.
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