In good old England there are many villages, whose history goes back several centuries, and one of them is the village of Woolpit in Suffolk. Today it is a typical British countryside, where life is quiet and measured day after day. And yet Woolpit is a very remarkable point on the map of Foggy Albion. The fact is that in the XII century two significant events took place here at once, which today the emblem of the village reminds descendants of - a wolf and two children holding hands.
Strange "frogs"
The image of a wolf on the coat of arms of Woolpit reflects a completely understandable and "everyday" event - it was in these places that the last wolf of England was killed 800 years ago. The unlucky predator landed in one of the deep wolf pits that were dug near the village, and thanks to this, the village became famous throughout the district. In addition, a significant trophy gave the name to the settlement, because Woolpit is translated from Old English as "wolf's pit". However, the story of the legendary trap had its own mysterious continuation, the memory of which became the children on the emblem of the village.
The village of Woolpit today.
One clear August day in 1173, when the peasants of the village were harvesting wheat, two small frightened children, a boy and a girl, crawled out of the pit, which was already a local landmark by that time. The kids, dressed in expensive-looking bright green clothes made of strange linen, carefully covered their faces with their hands from the sunlight, and the questions of people who ran up to them answered in an incomprehensible “hissing” language, the sounds of which resembled the buzzing of bees. But this was not the strangest thing - the hair and skin of the children had a strange greenish tint.
After a short consultation, the peasants decided to take the "frogs" to their lord, Sir Richard Keln. He looked with surprise at the green aliens, and then ordered to feed the kids. But even the most delicious dishes from the Lord's table did not deceive the children. However, when the beans were brought back from the field, the children immediately rushed to the baskets of pods. The kids ate this delicacy for several months, but then gradually they began to get used to everyday human food. As soon as the aliens' diet became more diverse, their skin and hair began to slowly lose their unusual green color, and soon the "frogs" - fair-skinned blue-eyed blondes - were not much different from other Woolpit children.
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To the ringing of bells
The newcomers settled in Sir Richard's castle, and after a while they were christened in the local chapel. A few days after the ceremony, the boy, who was two years younger than his sister, fell ill and died. The girl, who received the name Agness at baptism, became Sir Keln's ward. She quickly mastered English, told her story to the inhabitants of the castle.
Agnes and her brother lived in a country called Saint Martin's Land. The sun never rose there, the day in the homeland of the "frogs" resembled the earthly twilight, and at night complete darkness reigned. The panoramas of that unknown country are always covered with fog, and the skin and hair of its inhabitants are green. Agness's parents' house stood on the banks of a large river, next to which were the pastures where her father's flocks grazed.
On the memorable day, Agnes and her brother tended sheep near their father's house. Suddenly the children heard the melodic ringing of bells and decided to see where these sounds came from. Curiosity led the crumbs into a large cave, where they wandered for quite a long time, and after getting out of it, the guys ended up on Woolpit's field, where they were literally blinded by the bright sun.
I must say that Agnes, hoping to return home, more than once tried to find the very cave that led her to a strange world, but Sir Richard ordered the famous wolf pit to be filled up, as he feared that other, not at all harmless aliens might appear from it. …
And yet the fate of the "green" girl on earth was quite happy. Having reached adulthood, Agness happily married a distinguished young man, Richard Barr from Norfolk County. To whom she gave birth to two children and died at a respectable age, having outlived her husband by 30 years, in 1228.
Fairy messengers
Of course, the story of the green children from Woolpit could have been called a funny fiction if it had not been recorded by two famous and respected chroniclers of the time - Abbot Ralph Coggshall and William of Newburgh, author of the famous History of England.
Both in the Middle Ages and at a later time, researchers put forward a variety of hypotheses about where green children could appear in Woolpit. One of them suggests that the Land of Saint Martin, which Agnes spoke about, is the Land of the Dead. In other words, children accidentally left the other world, and the following facts are evidence of this. Beans, which were so adored by "frogs", have long been considered in Western Europe the food of the dead. And in Ancient Rome for a long time there was even a holiday - Demuria. During which beans and beans were sacrificed to deceased ancestors. In addition, the British believed that it was in these plants that the souls of people find a temporary refuge after death.
Another version says that Agnes and her brother are messengers from the fairy world, in which many inhabitants of the British Isles still believe. This kingdom of winged magical creatures is underground, and it makes sense that there is never a sun there. Also, all shades of green were considered the favorite color of fairies and elves, because they dressed exclusively in clothes made of emerald fabric, and their skin was cast green at the same time. A striking example of such "addictions" is Green Jack - the hero of numerous British myths and legends, known back in the early Middle Ages.
Was there a miracle ?
However, many researchers of the last century believe that the story of Agnes and her brother is quite a common case, albeit somewhat “embellished” by medieval chroniclers. One of these is the folklorist Paul Harris, who made the following suggestion in 1980. According to one of the Norfolk legends, one earl, whose possessions were located a few miles from Woolpit, became the guardian of two crumbs - a boy and a girl, who lost their parents early. But, since things were not going well with this lord, he decided to appropriate the property entrusted to him.
Coat of arms of Woolpit m depicting green children.
In pursuit of this goal, the guardian began to poison the legal heirs with arsenic, adding small doses of poison to food. However, for some unknown reason, the poison did not work on the children, only their skin acquired a strange greenish tint. And then the insidious lord took the kids to the forest growing on the border of two counties, Suffolk and Norfolk. In the dense thicket, the branches of which covered the sun, the kids wandered for several days. Then, hearing the ringing of bells, they went out to the wheat field of Woolpit. Over time, the body of the younger boy still could not overcome the effect of the poison, and the stronger girl survived.
According to other assumptions, the children fled from the copper mines, where at that time it was common to use toddler labor. And they came up with the unknown Land of Saint Martin out of fear of returning to this terrible place. It is known that with prolonged contact with copper, human hair and skin can acquire an emerald hue. And very recent events confirm this. For example, in 1995, the London Daily Mail published an article about two teenagers whose red hair turned green when they drank water with copper oxide. In Denmark, around the same time, a domestic cat suddenly turned green, and a blood test on this furry chameleon showed a high copper content in its body.
According to another version, put forward by the same Paul Harris, Agnes and her brother were the children of wandering actors lost in the woods. Since the babies wandered in more often without food, they developed a rare form of anemia - chlorosis, which causes greening of the skin.
Be that as it may, the mystery of the green children from Woolpit has not yet been solved.