Once upon a time, during the reign of King Stephen (1135-1154), two exceedingly unusual children appeared in the village of Woolpit, in Suffolk. They were found during the harvest time, so that would make the precise year sometime between summer 1136 and summer 1154.
One of the children was a boy and one was a girl, slightly older. They looked like anyone else, except that their skin had a greenish tint. They were found wandering near the trenches, or wolf pits, near the town. Their clothes were also green, and made of a material finer than anything worn by the villagers, but the style of the garments was not anything a noble would wear.
The people of the village were kind, and Sir Richard de Calne of Wykes took the children into his home, despite their strangeness. He lived in a manor about six miles north of town. They didn't speak English, or Latin, or Old French, or any other recognizable tongue. They refused to eat anything other than green beans, a trait which certainly made them even more of an anomaly, though no doubt endeared them further to the parents of Woolpit.
The children soon lost their green tinge, learned English, began to eat normally, and were baptized. Once they could communicate, they told villagers that they were brother and sister, and came from the land of St. Martin. It was a land where almost everything was green and the sun never shone, everyone lived in perpetual twilight. They were in the fields tending their father's sheep, when they got lost. They heard the sound of bells pealing louder and louder. The next thing they remembered, they were wandering the outskirts of the town.
Sadly, the boy was sickly and died soon after his baptism. His sister, however, continued to thrive. Her name was possibly Agnes, and she stayed with the family who first took her in, becoming Sir Richard's ward. She grew into a beautiful young woman, friendly and intelligent. Though by some accounts, she was a little TOO friendly with some of the young men in the town. However, she eventually settled down, and when the story was first recorded she had married a royal official named Richard Barre from King's Lynn and was still living there.
The earliest known written account of this story is in Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicum Anglicanum from the 1180s. It was also recorded in around 1220, in William of Newburgh's Historia rerum Anglicarum. Ralph was a Cistercian abbot, living in a monastery about 26 miles south of Woolpit. William was an Augustinian canon in Yorkshire. The two accounts are pretty much consistent.
The story was retold once in a 1638 book, then disappeared from the written record entirely, and was not mentioned again until the texts were rediscovered in the mid-nineteenth century. I found this account in an English book of notes and queries, published in 1900. It's also worth noting that folk tales usually contain tropes shared with many other tales from other places. This is an exception, there are no known similar stories, until the mid-1800s.
It's possible that the story is merely a fairy tale, but it's also possible that this is merely a metaphor for the forced Anglicization of the Briton people.
The explanation I like best (if I have to pick a logical explanation), is that the children were Flemish. Many Flemish immigrated to eastern England in the 12th century, but around the time of this incident, they were being actively persecuted by the crown. It's possible these children were orphaned or lost in the conflict and were too young to be able to tell adults their "home address." The nearest Flemish settlement was the village of Fornham St. Martin, slightly north of Woolpit. However there was no interaction between these groups. The children's clothing and language would have been utterly foreign to the English. Though it is unlikely that a man as educated as Sir Richard wouldn't have recognized Flemish.
However, this is the most plausible explanation. In fact, there is even an answer for the green tint. The children were likely suffering from chlorosis, a form of malnutrition. It goes away if an improved diet is implemented.
One final note: the feast of St Martin, Martinmas, is the time of death and slaughter. Green beans are the traditional food of the dead. Take from that what thou wilt.
What do you think? Pretty good story, huh?
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