John Clark, The Green Children of Woolpit: Chronicles, Fairies and Facts in Medieval England. Exeter New Approaches to Legend, Folkore and Popular Belief. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2024, xiii, 260 pp., 21 b/w illus., 2 maps.

In the mid-twelfth century in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England, at harvest-time, two children (a boy and a girl), having green skin and speaking an unknown language, were discovered in a pit. Initially they ate only raw beans, but eventually began to eat other foodstuffs, and thus over time lost their green color. Once they learned English, they claimed to come from St. Martin’s Land, where everyone was green and the sun’s rays were only as bright as at twilight. The boy soon died, but the girl lived and eventually married a man from Lynn.