THE GREEN CHILDREN OF WOOLPIT.
From the realms of Faerie?
This is a fascinating story from history. I have no personal connection with the place this story comes from but it just captures the imagination. I'm telling it in my subjective way but I did Google to check the date of this story and was surprised to find this happened,if it happened prior to AD 1230 in fact about in the reign of King Stephen,our only King by that name and for much of his Reign England was under the time known as The Anarchy as his cousin the Empress Matilda,the Rightful Queen,the daughter of King Henry 1 was battling with this usurper for her throne which she secured for her son King Henry 2,a most competent King who established the principle of ONE LAW in ONE KINGDOM,a principle that only now is breaking down. In that turbulent age near the Suffolk village of WOOLPIT that is between Bury St Edmunds and Stow market two children were found wandering hand in hand down a lane. The children were thin and frail,blonde haired and blue eyed and they both had GREEN SKIN. What the two children were wearing I dont know but the kind villagers took these two strange children in to be fed and looked after. The children spoke to each other in a language that no one could identify and could not speak of understand English. (They learned it). The local people decided the children were from the realms of Faerie,that is they must be human babies that had been stolen from the cradle by a fairy in order to put her own baby in. Fairies were not the dainty pretty things of later on,they were immensely and dangerously attractive and sexily seductive beings of male and female appearance and to encounter them was not good. You might be lured to dance with them and be taken down into the earth to the Realm of Faerie and never be seen again. When the children who were put to live with a local farming family,could speak English their explanation of their origin seemed to confirm the theory. The girl ,who was the more forward said they came from a place under the ground where it was always twilight. I can't remember all of it but one day the two children saw a hole above them and climbed out into this magic world they had never known of. The boy died but the girl lived to adulthood,is said to have married a local farmer and there could be descendants of the green skinned fairy girl to this day.
About that Green Skin. It went away as the children were fed on good proper healthy food. By the time the girl got married she had a normal complexion.
So,did this happen AT ALL or is it a TALL TALE. Over the centuries academics and historians have argued both ways.
Now,a strong case is made that it IS based on truth. And the possible explanation is rather chilling - if it is indeed the truth.
The two children may have been orphaned in The Anarchy but heirs to land /money that an adult relative wanted( echoes of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower),so this relative had the children who would have been tiny they knew no other but their twilight world, immured in a cellar or some sort of underground place. Could two tiny children have survived like that ? The food supplied for the little prisoners had arsenic in it. Is that possible. Well seems that back in the day a diet of arsenic laced food was used to not cure but cope with some medical condition,so it can be consumed in a tiny portion regularly without killing you, - but it turns your skin green. Is this the solution,partial solution to the historical mystery?
If it's true then I'm glad the children escaped. Did a compassionate servant open a trapdoor and leave a ladder handy. Is it a total folk story. It resonates with the Earth Magic of ancient Britain that the Classical Greeks recognized and respected.