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Sometime in the middle of the 12th century, harvesters near the Suffolk village of Woolpit found two children hiding in one of the wolf pits that gave the village its name. A boy and a girl, holding hands, terrified, unable to speak a word anyone recognized — and green. Not pale, not sunburnt, not sick in any way the villagers had a name for. Green, all over, like something that had never seen full daylight.
What makes this story unusual isn't the color. Medieval England produced plenty of tall tales that vanished with the storyteller. This one didn't. It was written down twice, by two separate clerics, within a few decades of the supposed event, and both accounts agree on the core details even where they disagree on the rest.
Two Chroniclers, One Strange Report
The earlier, more detailed account comes from Ralph of Coggeshall, a Cistercian abbot who included the story in his Chronicon Anglicanum, likely written around the 1220s. Ralph says he heard it directly from Sir Richard de Calne, the local knight who took the children in — a detail that matters, since it means the chronicle isn't reporting rumor at several removes but citing a named, living source.
The second version comes from William of Newburgh, an Augustinian canon writing his Historia rerum Anglicarum around the same period, working independently in Yorkshire, roughly 150 miles away. William had a reputation among medieval historians for skeptical, source-checking habits, and he includes the Woolpit story with visible unease, noting he nearly left it out for how implausible it sounded, before deciding the weight of testimony he'd heard made it worth recording.
Both accounts describe the same essentials: two green-skinned children, a boy and a girl, appearing near Woolpit; their clothing made of unfamiliar material; their refusal or inability to eat normal food at first; and their eventual survival on raw beans, which villagers reportedly had to teach them to find inside the pods rather than eating the stalks.
Where the Two Versions Split
Past that shared skeleton, Ralph and William diverge in ways that matter for how seriously historians take the story.
- The boy's fate. Ralph writes that the boy sickened and died shortly after being baptized. William doesn't mention a death at all — in his telling, both children survive.
- The girl's later life. Both agree the girl survived, lost her green coloring as she adjusted to ordinary food, learned English, and was baptized. Ralph adds that she was later employed in Sir Richard's household and, by his account, grew up to marry a man from King's Lynn.
- Their homeland. Here the story turns strange rather than merely unusual. The girl reportedly said she and the boy came from "St. Martin's Land," a place of perpetual twilight where everything — the people included — was green, with a luminous country visible across a wide river. She said she'd been tending sheep with her brother when they heard a loud noise, followed it into a cave, and emerged lost in Woolpit's daylight.
Neither chronicler offers an explanation. Both simply report what they say they were told — notable, since 12th-century clerical writing rarely resisted moralizing, and neither writer does much of that here.
What Modern Historians Think Happened
Historians who treat the chronicles as historical documents, rather than folklore that got mistakenly written down, tend to land on one of a few explanations, none supernatural.
- Flemish immigrant orphans. The most widely cited theory ties the children to the Flemish community settled in eastern England during the 12th century, including a documented settlement at Fornham St. Martin, a few miles from Woolpit. Flemish immigrants there faced periodic persecution under King Stephen's reign, notably after an 1173 battle near Fornham St. Martin. Two orphaned, Flemish-speaking children fleeing that violence and turning up disoriented near Woolpit would have sounded like they spoke gibberish to English villagers, and could plausibly have come from a place resembling "St. Martin's Land."
- Green sickness. The children's coloring has a documented medical parallel: chlorosis, or “green sickness,” a form of iron-deficiency anemia historically linked to malnourishment, known to give sufferers' skin a pale greenish tint. A prolonged diet of raw beans, the only food the children reportedly tolerated at first, fits that picture — and the girl's color is said to have faded as her diet normalized, consistent with anemia resolving rather than a fantastical trait wearing off.
- Folklore and fabrication. A minority of scholars argue the story functioned less as reportage and more as moral or symbolic storytelling, possibly echoing older Celtic or continental fairy tales about children from an otherworld. The chroniclers' disagreement over the boy's fate is sometimes cited as evidence the story had already begun mutating through retelling before either writer captured it.
No theory covers every detail. The Flemish-orphan explanation fits the language barrier and the "St. Martin's Land" name but strains to fully explain the green skin; the medical explanation covers the color but not the underground journey the girl described. What survives is less a solved case than a genuinely old, genuinely documented mystery two independent medieval writers thought was worth the ink.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Green Children of Woolpit story historically documented?
Yes — two independent 12th/13th-century chroniclers, Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh, both recorded it within a few decades of the event, citing named sources. That doesn't confirm the events happened exactly as described, but it separates the story from pure oral folklore with no textual trail.
What is the most accepted explanation today?
Most historians favor the Flemish immigrant theory: orphaned children fleeing anti-Flemish violence in 12th-century England, malnourished and speaking an unfamiliar language, discovered near Woolpit and misunderstood by villagers. The green skin is generally attributed to chlorosis, a real anemia-related condition.
Did both children survive?
The accounts disagree. William says both survived and were baptized. Ralph says the boy died shortly after baptism, while the girl lived on, eventually working in Sir Richard de Calne's household.
Why is the village called Woolpit?
The name predates the legend, from Old English wulf-pytt, “wolf pit” — pits historically dug there to trap wolves. The children were reportedly found hiding in one, which is how the location entered the story, not the reverse.
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