Why, the villagers wondered, were they completely green?

The story of the otherworldly children of Woolpit has long been treated as folklore - but, as John Clark explains, the tale may not be as fanciful as it seems

- BECCA THORNE

The children were green. There were other strange things about the boy and girl found in a Suffolk field on a summer's day in the middle of the 12th century, but it was their hue that was most striking. "In the shape of their whole bodies they were like other people," wrote the chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall, "but they differed in the colour of their skin from all the mortal inhabitants of our world; for the whole surface of their skin was... a green colour." The essentials of the story run as follows.

In a field in Woolpit, a Suffolk village between Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, harvesters came upon two terrified children apparently emerging from a pit. Their skin was, in the words of Ralph of Coggeshall, "prassinus color" - the dark green of leek leaves. They were strangely dressed, spoke an unknown language, and did not understand English.

The villagers quickly decided to make the pair somebody else's problem. But, rather than taking them to the local landlord, the Abbot of Bury in Bury St Edmunds, they led the youngsters some 8 miles north to Wykes, the manor house of Sir Richard de Calne in the parish of Bardwell. Not much is known about Sir Richard, but he seems to have taken ownership of Wykes by 1135, and died around 1188. The de Calne family also owned various other properties in Suffolk and Essex.

Sir Richard took in the children. They were clearly starving, but for some days they refused all the food they were offered. By chance, they then saw some fresh-cut beanstalks being brought into the house, and gestured eagerly that they wanted the beans. A bystander had to show the children how to open the pods to extract the beans, which "they ate... with great joy, and would touch no other food at all for a long time".

Feeling off colour