The Legend of the Green Children of Woolpit: The Subterranean World, the Green Skin, and the Medieval Mystery of the Twelfth Century
The Reapers of the Wolf Pits In the late twelfth century, during the reign of King Stephen of England, a strange event occurred in the Suffolk village of Woolpit (whose name is derived from the ancient wolf pits dug to capture the predators of the forests). According to the independent chronicles of two contemporary writers—William of Newburgh in his Historia Rerum Anglicarum and Ralph of Coggeshall in his Chronicon Anglicanum —a boy and a girl were discovered by reapers in the harvest fields near the pits. The children spoke an unknown language, wore garments made of a strange, synthetic-like fabric, and their skin was of a bright, uniform green color . The children were taken to the house of the local landowner, Sir Richard de Calne, where they refused to eat any food offered to them for many days, weeping in hunger, until they were shown fresh green beans ( fabae ). They immediately ate the beans with great delight, refusing all other nourishment for months, until they were gr...