Green children of Woolpit
The legend of the green children of Woolpit concerns two children of unusual skin colour who reportedly appeared in the village of
The only near-contemporary accounts are contained in William of Newburgh's Historia rerum Anglicarum and Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicum Anglicanum, written in about 1189 and 1220, respectively. Between then and their rediscovery in the mid-19th century, the green children seem to surface only in a passing mention in William Camden's Britannia in 1586, and in two works from the early 17th century, Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy and Bishop Francis Godwin's fantastical The Man in the Moone. Two approaches have dominated explanations of the story of the green children: that it is a folktale describing an imaginary encounter with the inhabitants of another world, perhaps subterranean or extraterrestrial, or it presents a real event in a garbled manner. The story was praised as an ideal fantasy by the English anarchist poet and critic Herbert Read in his English Prose Style, first published in 1928, and provided the inspiration for his only novel, The Green Child, published in 1935.
Sources
The village of
While it was common for medieval chroniclers to copy others' passages verbatim—often with little or no attribution
Story
At harvest time one day during the reign of
After learning to speak English, the children—Ralph says just the surviving girl—explained that they came from a land where the sun never shone and the light was like twilight. William says the girl called their home St Martin's Land; Ralph adds that everything there was green. According to William, the children were unable to account for their arrival in Woolpit; they had been herding their father's cattle when they heard a loud noise (according to William, it was like the sound of the bells of Bury St Edmunds abbey[11]) and suddenly found themselves by the wolf pit where they were found. Ralph says that they had become lost when they followed the cattle into a cave and, after being guided by the sound of bells, eventually emerged into our land.[4]
According to Ralph, the girl was employed for many years as a servant in Richard de Calne's household, where she was considered to be "very wanton and impudent". William says that she eventually married a man from King's Lynn, about 40 miles (64 km) from Woolpit, where she was still living shortly before he wrote.[4] Based on his research into Richard de Calne's family history, the astronomer and writer Duncan Lunan has concluded that the girl was given the name 'Agnes' and that she married a royal official named Richard Barre.[12]
Explanations
Neither Ralph of Coggeshall nor William of Newburgh offer an explanation for the "strange and prodigious" event, as William calls it, and some modern historians have the same reticence: "I consider the process of worrying over the suggestive details of these wonderfully pointless miracles in an effort to find natural or psychological explanations of what 'really,' if anything, happened, to be useless to the study of William of Newburgh or, for that matter, of the Middle Ages", says Nancy Partner, author of a study of 12th-century
Folklore
Twentieth-century scholars of folklore such as Charles Oman noted that one element of the children's account, the entry into a different reality by way of a cave, seems to have been quite popular. Gerald of Wales, the medieval historian, tells a similar story of a boy, a truant from school, who "encountered two pigmies who led him through an underground passage into a beautiful land with fields and rivers, but not lit by the full light of the sun".[20] But the specific motif that refers to the green children is poorly attested; E. W. Baughman lists it as the only example of his F103.1 category of English and North American folktale motifs: "Inhabitants of lower world visit mortals, and continue to live with them".[21] Madej has similarly argued that the tale of the Green Children was part of a popular skein of imagination, "originating in the territories of England and Wales, that of passing through a cave to another world".[7][note 3]
Martin Walsh identifies the story of the green children as "a garbled account of an atavistic harvest ritual".
The eating of beans has also attracted the attention of folklorists. "It is to be noticed, too, that the habitual food of the children was beans, the food of the dead", observes K. M. Briggs.[29] She had made the same observation about the food of the dead in her 1967 book "The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature",[30] but John Clark casts doubt on the supposed tradition that Briggs is referring to, commenting that "an identification of beans as the food of the dead is unwarranted".[25] However, he agrees that "beans are in many cultures associated with the dead", and Madej argues that not only had broad beans "been the symbol of death and corruption since the ancient times ... they were also associated with opposite phenomena, such as rebirth and fertility".[22]
A modern version of the tale links the green children with the Babes in the Wood. Although there are differing stories, a common motif is that they are left or taken to die in the woods—often identified as Wayland Wood or Thetford Forest—after being poisoned with arsenic by their uncle. The arsenical poisoning resulted in their colouration; they became further linked with the Woolpit children after escaping the woods, but falling into the pits before their ultimate discovery. This version of the story was known to local author and folk singer Bob Roberts, who says in his 1978 book A Slice of Suffolk "I was told there are still people in Woolpit who are 'descended from the green children', but nobody would tell me who they were!"[1]
Other commentators have suggested that the children may have been
Historical explanations
In 1998 Paul Harris argued for a "down to earth" explanation of the green children in the context of 12th-century history.
In a follow-up article, John Clark drew attention to some problems with Harris’s use of the historical evidence, and remained unconvinced by the identification of the children as Flemings or their colour as due to green sickness.[38] Brian Haughton describes Harris's hypothesis as "the most widely accepted explanation at present" and maintains that it "certainly suggests plausible answers to many of the riddles of the Woolpit mystery".[39] However, he concludes that "the theory of displaced Flemish orphans ... does not stand up in many respects". For instance, he suggests it is unlikely that an educated man like Richard de Calne would not have recognised the language spoken by the children as being Flemish.[40] Similarly, concerning green sickness, Madej counters that much of the contemporary population should probably have suffered from the same disease, and also appeared green; "the tone of green of the children's skin must have been something unprecedented and unusual."[41]
Historian Derek Brewer's explanation is even more prosaic:
The likely core of the matter is that these very small children, herding or following flocks, strayed from their forest village, spoke little, and (in modern terms) did not know their own home address. They were probably suffering from chlorosis, a deficiency disease which gives the skin a greenish tint, hence the term "green sickness". With a better diet it disappears.[42]
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen proposes that the story is about racial difference, and "allows William to write obliquely about the Welsh".[43] He argues that the green children are a memory of England's past and the conquest of the indigenous Britons by the Anglo-Saxons followed by the Norman invasion. William of Newburgh—reluctantly, suggests Cohen[44]—includes the story of the green children in his account of a largely unified, homogenous England.[45] Cohen juxtaposes William of Newburgh's account of the green children with
Historians have suggested motivations for the two monastic authors. Ruch, and Gordon, have proposed episodes such as the Green Children are comments on the main historical narrative.
Publication and legacy
The story reappeared in the
The tale resurfaced in the mid-
The English
Author John Macklin includes an account in his 1965 book, Strange Destinies, of two green children who arrived in the Spanish village of Banjos in 1887.[1] Many details of the story very closely resemble the accounts given of the Woolpit children, such as the name of Ricardo de Calno, the mayor of Banjos who befriends the two children, strikingly similar to Richard de Calne.[60] It is clear that Macklin's story is an invention inspired by the green children of Woolpit,[1] particularly as there is no record of any Spanish village called Banjos.[60]
The green children tale was the inspiration for J. H. Prynne's 1976 poem "The Land of Saint Martin".[61] Prynne never acknowledges this directly, however, merely alluding to it tangentially in his epigraph, a "fairly free rendering", says critic N. H. Reeve, of William of Newburgh's Latin text:[62]
The sun does not rise upon our countrymen; our land is little cheered by its beams; we are contented with that twilight, which, among you, precedes the sun-rise, or follows the sun-set. Moreover, a certain luminous country is seen, not far distant from ours, and divided from it by a very considerable river.[61]
Australian novelist and poet Randolph Stow uses the account of the green children in his 1980 novel The Girl Green as Elderflower; the green girl is the source for the title character, here a blonde girl with green eyes. The green children become a source of interest to the main character, Crispin Clare, along with some other characters from the Latin accounts of William of Newburgh, Gervase of Tilbury, and others, and Stow includes translations from those texts: these characters "have histories of loss and dispossession that echo [Clare's] own".[63]
In 1996 English poet Glyn Maxwell wrote a verse play based on the story of the green children, Wolfpit (the earlier name for Woolpit[9]), which was performed by the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in that year.[64][65] It has been performed more recently in New York City. In Maxwell's version the girl becomes an indentured servant to the lord of the manor, until a stranger named Juxon buys her freedom and takes her to an unknown destination.[66]
The tale has been the basis for several 20th- and 21st-century
Music
The green children are the subject of a 1990 community opera performed by children and adults, composed by Nicola LeFanu with a libretto by Crossley-Holland.[73] The piece features lacunae for a child orchestra to insert its own material.[74]
An Anglo-Norwegian band,
Notes
- ^ Richard de Calne died in or before 1188.[2] In Thomas Keightley's translation he is named Richard de Caine.[3]
- ^ A wolf pit was a deep pit into which carrion was thrown to attract wolves, and then covered over with branches.[10]
- Antipodean world where the seasons were the other way around.[22]
- ^ Madej also cites Witte in support of his suggestion that "St Martin's day (11 November) is celebrated shortly after All Saints' and All Souls' Days, and additionally, at its origin there was a much older Celtic festival, also held in honor of the dead",[22] a conclusion disputed by Clark.[27]
References
Citations
- ^ a b c d Clark 2006a, p. 216.
- ^ Clark 2006a, p. 224 n.2.
- ^ Clark 2006a, p. 225 n.9.
- ^ a b c d e f Clark 2006a, p. 210.
- ^ a b Madej 2020, p. 120.
- ^ Madej 2020, pp. 120–121.
- ^ a b Madej 2020, p. 121.
- ^ Campbell 2016, pp. 119–120.
- ^ a b Mills 2011.
- ^ Cosman & Jones 2008, p. 127.
- ^ Cohen 2008, p. 83.
- ^ Lunan 1996, pp. 49–51.
- ^ Partner 1977, pp. 121–122.
- ^ a b Clark 2006a, p. 209.
- ^ a b Clark 2006a, p. 211.
- ^ Lunan 1996.
- ^ Orme 1995, p. 75.
- ^ Oman 1944, pp. 11–12.
- ^ a b Cohen 2008, p. 90.
- ^ Oman 1944, p. 11.
- ^ Baughman 1966, p. 203.
- ^ a b c d Madej 2020, p. 122.
- ^ a b Walsh 2000, p. 247.
- ^ Clark 2006b, pp. 208–9.
- ^ a b Clark 2006b, p. 211.
- ^ Witte 1988, pp. 67–68.
- ^ Clark 2006b, p. 208.
- ^ a b Madej 2020, p. 124.
- ^ Briggs 1970, p. 81.
- ^ Briggs 1967, p. 6.
- ^ Poole 2005, pp. 200–202.
- ^ Clark 2006a, pp. 212–215.
- ^ Harris 1998.
- ^ Harris 1998, pp. 90–91.
- ^ Harris 1998, pp. 93–94.
- ^ Harris 1998, p. 93.
- ^ Harris 1998, p. 89.
- ^ Clark 1999.
- ^ Haughton 2007, p. 237.
- ^ Haughton 2007, pp. 237–238.
- ^ Madej 2020, p. 125.
- ^ Brewer 1997, p. 182.
- ^ Duckworth 2011, p. 106.
- ^ Cohen 2008, p. 84.
- ^ a b Cohen 2008, p. 80.
- ^ Cohen 2008, pp. 85–88.
- ^ Cohen 2008, p. 91.
- ^ Ruch 2013.
- ^ Gordon 2015.
- ^ Clarke 2009b, p. 39.
- ^ Clarke 2009a, p. 69.
- ^ Clarke 2009a, p. 72.
- ^ Freeman 2000.
- ^ Watkins 2007, p. 225.
- ^ Plumtree 2022, p. 223.
- ^ Poole 2005, p. 201.
- ^ Clark 2006a, pp. 213–215.
- ^ a b Clark 2006a, p. 215.
- ^ Morris 2010.
- ^ a b Fanthorpe & Fanthorpe 2010, p. 311.
- ^ a b Reeve 2002, p. 27.
- ^ Reeve 2002, p. 31.
- ^ Duckworth 2011, p. 103.
- ^ Clark 2006a, p. 219.
- ^ Edinburgh Festival Fringe 1996, pp. 40, 67.
- ^ Smith 2002.
- ^ Bramwell 2009, p. 54.
- ^ Bramwell 2009, p. 193 n.6.
- ^ Hartley-Kroeger 2019, p. 13.
- ^ a b Clark 2006a, pp. 218–219.
- ^ Bramwell 2009, pp. 53–54.
- ^ Clark 2006a, pp. 219–220, 222–23.
- ^ LeFanu 2011.
- ^ Campbell 2016, p. 119 n.8.
- ^ Milligan 2019.
Bibliography
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- Bramwell, P. (2009). Pagan Themes in Modern Children's Fiction: Green Man, Shamanism, Earth Mysteries. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-23021-839-0.
- ISBN 978-0-85991-433-8.
- ISBN 978-0-415-29151-4.
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- Campbell, M. B. (2016). "'Those two Green Children which Nubrigensis Speaks of in his Time, That Fell from Heaven', or the Origins of Science Fiction". In Kears, C.; Paz, J (eds.). Medieval Science Fiction. Medieval Studies. Vol. 24. London: King's College. pp. 117–132. ISBN 978-0-95398-388-9.
- Clark, John (1999). "The Green Children: A Cautionary Tale". In Moore, Steve (ed.). Fortean Studies: Volume 6. John Brown Publishing. pp. 270–277. ISBN 1-902212-207.
- Clark, John (2006a). "'Small, Vulnerable ETs': The Green Children of Woolpit". Science Fiction Studies. 33 (2): 209–229. JSTOR 4241432.
- Clark, John (2006b). "Martin and the Green Children". S2CID 162077385.
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- Gordon, Stephen (2 October 2015). "Social monsters and the walking dead in William of Newburgh's Historia rerum Anglicarum". Journal of Medieval History. 41 (4): 446–465. S2CID 159985689.
- Harris, Paul (1998). "The Green Children of Woolpit: A 12th Century Mystery and its Possible Solution". In Moore, Steve (ed.). Fortean Studies: Volume 4. John Brown Publishing. pp. 81–95. ISBN 978-1-870870-96-2.
- Hartley-Kroeger, F. (2019). "Review of The Green Children of Woolpit, by J. Anderson Coats". Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. 73: 13. S2CID 202247575.
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- Milligan, Kaitlin (2019). "TGC (The Green Children) Release New Single 'Symbiotic'". BroadwayWorld.com. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
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- Smith, D. (18 March 2002). "Foundlings Wrapped in a Green Mystery". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
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- Watkins, C. S. (2007). History and the supernatural in medieval England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-49625-7.
- Witte, A. E. (1988). "St Martin: Seasonal and Legendary Aspects". Mediaevalia. 14: 63–74. OCLC 939797673.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-1-908097-05-7.
- ISBN 978-0-19-860766-3.
- Young, Francis Kendrick (2018). Suffolk Fairylore. Norwich: Lasse Press. ISBN 978-1-9997752-3-0.
External links
- Dunning, Brian (3 December 2019). "The Green Children of Woolpit". Skeptoid.com. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
- Haughton, Brian. "The Mystery of the Green Children of Woolpit". BrianHaughton.com. Retrieved 4 March 2022.