Strangers in a Strange Land

Over the years, the tale of two strange children with green skins and speaking an unknown language appearing in a Suffolk village has been told and retold many times. As a result, it has attracted the attentions of historians, folklorists and forteans – but is this mediæval mystery any closer to being solved? JOHN CLARK, author of a major new book on the subject, offers an overview – and another potential explanation…

They were green. There were other strange things about the two children, a boy and a girl, found by harvesters in the fields of the Suffolk village of Woolpit on a summer’s day in the 12 th century. But it was their green skin that people first noticed. There was much more to the story, but that’s how it began. 1 THE STORY Two mediæval chroniclers reported this mysterious event and its consequences: William of Newburgh, an Augustinian canon at Newburgh Priory in Yorkshire, and Ralph of Coggeshall, abbot of a small Cistercian house in north Essex (see FT377:40-45). Ralph’s chapter “Concerning a boy and a girl who emerged from the ground” appeared in his Chronicon Anglicanum (English Chronicle). Ralph did not finish writing his Chronicle until the 1220s, but…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 455

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