In Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicum Anglicarum (“Chronicle of England”) and William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum Anglicarum (“History of English Events”) , there is a striking story describing an event that took place in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, sometime in the 12th century, during the reigns of either King Stephen (1135-54) or King Henry II (1154-1189), depending on the version used.
Author Coggeshall recounts that he often heard this story from De Calne, an insider, while historian William shared that he believed the story because of “numerous credible witnesses.”
Woolpit is named after the Old English phrase “wulf-pyt t,” or modern English “wolf-pit ,” meaning deep pits used to trap wolves. The story goes that during one harvest season, two mysterious children, a boy and a girl, suddenly emerged from one of these pits.
They seemed to appear out of nowhere. They spoke an incomprehensible language, wore strange clothing, neither ate nor drank, and possessed green skin. They didn’t appear to be from this world.
So who are they and where do they come from?
The two children seemed to appear out of nowhere. (Photo: Internet)
The villagers looked at them as if they had never seen anything like it before. This was understandable, as the two children were dressed in strange clothing and had blue skin . No one could communicate with them due to the language barrier. The two children were taken to the home of a local landowner, Sir Richard de Calne.
Feeling strange and isolated from the world around them, they were very sad and cried for days. They refused to eat or drink anything offered, but looked hungry. Only when someone brought them “fresh beans with stems” did they devour them. They lived solely on beans for months. Later, they began to eat bread.
As time passed, the boy’s health deteriorated. He succumbed to illness and passed away. The girl, however, seemed to adapt better to her surroundings.
She gradually lost her blue skin color and became healthy. She learned English to communicate with society. Later, she even married a local man.
People asked her about her past and where she came from, but everything she said only added to the mystery surrounding her identity. She said she and her younger brother came from “a land without sunlight,” but rather a perpetual twilight. All the inhabitants there had blue skin.
She wasn’t sure where her home was. However, she remembered another “glowing” land , separated from her world by a “long, wide river.”
It is also unclear how these children ended up in the hole.
The young girl said that she and her younger brother were tending livestock for their father when the herd wandered into a cave. They followed the animals inside and heard bells ringing. They wandered in the darkness for a long time until they reached the cave entrance and were suddenly blinded by an intense burst of light.
The intense sunlight and unusually high temperatures exhausted them, so they stopped to rest. Then they heard voices and encountered a group of strangers, so they fled as fast as they could. However, the two children couldn’t find the cave entrance and were caught.
The two children were wearing clothes made of a strange material and had blue skin. (Photo: Internet)
Many explanations have been offered for the mysterious identities of the two children.
Some believe the two children were persecuted immigrants from Flanders (Belgium). Their parents were murdered, and they had to hide in the woods.
This theory might explain the strange clothing they wore, but it doesn’t explain why they spoke such a peculiar language. In fact, locals could have recognized them as Flemish .
Others speculate that the cause of the cyanosis could be due to nutritional deficiencies or arsenic poisoning . There was once a rumor that an uncle plotted to assassinate his nephew with poison, but this rumor has never been confirmed.
A plaque in the village of Woolpit, depicting the legend of the two children from the 12th century. (Image: Wikimedia Commons).
What about the strange language and clothing of these children? Many historians believe they may have been the children of Flemish immigrants who were killed by King Stephen or King Henry II. Therefore, what the villagers at Woolpit considered a “strange language” could actually have been Dutch.
As Ancient Origins explains, some people believed that the green skin, strange clothing, and incomprehensible language of the children were a sure sign that they came from outer space. This hypothesis seems to have first been put forward in the 17th century, when Robert Burton wrote in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) that the green children of Woolpit “fell from the sky.”
Although there is little evidence to support this hypothesis, there are certainly some points of overlap between the story of Woolpit’s blue children and modern depictions of extraterrestrial beings.
Of course, there are also some who say that the Green Children of Woolpit never existed.
Is it possible these mysterious children arrived in our world through a time window, another dimension, or from an underground world? Over the years, many have pondered this very question, attempting to find an explanation for a bizarre event from the distant past.
