After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Mystery of the Medieval Green Children

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Two green children walked into the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England, sometime in the 12th century. They said they were from a magic land where everything was as green as they were. What on earth was going on?Maddy tells Anthony this story that has drawn in curious minds for hundreds of years.Written by Maddy Pelling. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK - sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here.

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It's harvest season here. In the surrounding fields, men, women and children are working hard, reaping the precious spoils of the year behind them. It's a special time, but also a nervous one. The crops must be harvested at exactly the right moment, not too soon and not too late. The light is starting to die and soon sore shoulders and calloused hands will be nursed over a dram or two of drink. There may even be dancing. As the last bundles of produce are tied, figures begin to peel off, heading back to the comfort of the village.

But it's not long before the procession notices something odd. Making their way over the ground towards the inhabitants of Woolpit are two tiny figures, children. A boy, it seems, and a girl, a little older, holding his hand. They're tottering, dazed, unsure of themselves. But that's hardly the first thing the villagers notice about them. This is because both boy and girl are entirely green. The first of the harvesters reaches the infant just in time and the two little ones collapse gratefully into their arms. They're babbling in a language unknown in these parts. Their clothes are odd too, made of a strange kind of cloth, the weave of which has not been seen before.

Concerned whispers spread through the group. Who or what are these little people and what are they doing here? What, the men and women of Woolpit wonder, should they do with them now? wonder, should they do with them now? By the time the workers make it back to the village, the children carried in front of them like the strange results of the day's industry, word has gotten ahead. A crowd has gathered and soon everyone is talking about the tiny green children. Hello and welcome to After Dark. My name is Anthony.

And I'm Maddy. And yes, we finally got there. We have little green men for you. But in After Dark theme, they are medieval little green men. I was listening to that story and I was like, oh, it's a harvest, a lovely rural tale of bucolic bliss. But no, no, we couldn't leave it at that. It had to be little green children. We've got harvest fields, we've got harvest fields. We've got everyone having a nice time. And then we've got tiny green children, of course.

Like, why wouldn't we? Come on. And like, can I just clarify? Are they definitely children or are they just little people that they interpreted as children? So they're interpreted as children. I mean, we're going to get into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How much of this is true?

Yeah. Oh, no, all of it. This is all true. It's all accurate. So, I mean, this is a story that comes down to us from the 12th century and has been reinterpreted since. But the 12th century is kind of seen as its origin. It's a story that's set sometimes in the reign of King Stephen,

sometimes in the reign of King Henry. It's unclear. It's hidden in the mists of time. It's about for me to admit that I've never heard of King Stephen, sometimes in the reign of King Henry. It's unclear. It's, you know, hidden in the mists of time. It's about for me to admit that I've never heard of King Stephen. I mean, I'm not going to admit that I have also not heard of King Stephen. It's fine. We're not medievalists. I feel like, were there any more Stephens? It's a weird one.

It feels a little bit like King Clive. Yeah, sorry to the Stephens out there. And Clives. I'm sure you'd make great kings and viewers of Little Green Men. But anyway. Yeah, absolutely. So we're in Woolpit, which is in Suffolk. It's a medieval village.

Now, I love this fact. It's actually, so today we think of it as Woolpit. You might think it was to do with maybe the wool trade in the medieval times. It's actually Woolfpit originally. I saw this in my briefing notes and I was like, yes, of course it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a Woolfpit. Does that mean the wool pack? It so it's the wolf pack in emmerdale oh right in if you know sorry sorry i'm getting distracted okay okay i'm gonna look that up later so a wolf pit is basically a pit dug into the earth with metal or more often wooden spikes that are sharpened to a point you

know and the idea is that if you were hunting in the area you would be able to kind of herd the wolves into these pits and they would either die on the spikes or you could kill them once they were in there so it's a way of protecting your community and stuff so we have quite a rural community and one that maybe not at this point in the 12th century but in the past has been surrounded by wolf pits this is a place that is i think it's fair to say kind of a wary of the landscape the danger the landscape can bring and into this very tight-knit world come these two green people and we see this a lot don't we where there's this green people we't we where there's this

green people we see green people there's this threat actually i have this new green thing for my face that takes away redness again i'm tangent city on this episode today okay let's go again we see this a lot in some of these episodes where danger is lurking around not necessarily in the center but but around the village and therefore around the story or the history story in this case, most likely, although prove me wrong. There is this danger and the wolves are there and OK, the wolf pits are to protect against the wolves. But at the same time, you can imagine a child wandering off and falling into these pits like it's pretty it could be pretty gruesome. The image is just quite gruesome yeah i think so and you know we are in a medieval world here it's a world which is dealing in death

disease um we talked about the fact that this is at harvest time i mean just the fact that crops can die and then you might starve to death as a as an entire village and you know something that we have all across the english landscape certainly and i i guess it's probably the same in Ireland, in Scotland and in Wales, is abandoned medieval villages, villages where people just left because so many people died of plague or the land wasn't yielding the crops they needed that year. And they just went. They just left the buildings, left the homes,

and whoever survived went somewhere else and started again. So there's a real sense of risk i think in this world and that's something we have to bear in mind that that's the context for this story this history whatever we want to whatever we want to call it the story comes down to us through two separate accounts and i think this is really interesting because they're both kind of contemporary so the first one, I'm sorry for my Latin pronunciation, is the Historia Rerum Anglicarum, which was written by William of Newborough. And he's a Yorkshire monk.

Okay, so he's writing, it's a history of England, basically, this book, from the Norman conquest to kind of like maybe 100, 200 years later or something. So history of England over a very small amount of time that he has some kind of information about. So he writes one account of these green children coming to Woolpit in Suffolk. And then we also have another text,

which is another monk, because of course these are the most literate people in this period. So it's called the... Yes, go for it. It's called the Chronicon Anglicanum. And this is by another monk, a Cistercian abbot this time, called Ralph of Coggeshall.

Ralph? And he's of Coggeshall, but he's based in Essex. So he's a little bit closer to Suffolk. And I think generally people take his account as potentially being the more accurate of the two. There are little differences between the two stories and i think that's important thinking about how stories like this whether they're true or not how they spread in the medieval period and it's interesting that it's both monks writing about them i think it gives a

sense of you know people maybe coming through those monastic communities either as religious figures or you know as people seeking some kind of help, people travelling, people trading, that this is a story that people want to talk about and that is spreading. I also think as soon as you say monk-related or that it has some religious connotation, there's a lesson in here that we're supposed to be learning and I'm sure we'll get to this. There is a warning, there is something to guide us away from something old,

likely, and towards something new. And I'm sure that might become apparent as we go through. Yes, absolutely. However, I will say that it's not necessarily presented, at least on the surface, as that by these monks. So William of Newborough, the monk who's writing in Yorkshire about this, when he writes about it, he actually kind of says, I don't know how true this is. I'm dubious about this. So there's a sense that this is a story

that's being taken at face value. And then the people writing it down are at least a little bit inquisitive. So he says, you know, I'm kind of, it seems he says the word ridiculous. He says, I think it's ridiculous to give credit to a circumstance like this. I think it's really important that we take that for a second

because there is this belief that medieval period, the Dark Ages, is this... I can hear medievalists gasping everywhere at you, saying the Dark Ages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That they're shrouded in this ignorance. And we think with the distance, oh, we've come so far and we know what beliefs are

and we've landed on what the beliefs are that we need to we're the the civilized people but at the same time these people were thinking along the same lines with a lot of this kind of thing so i think it's really interesting that william i have a feeling ralph is going to not be that person but william william definitely is a little bit like i'm not really sure. But he does say, having said that, he is cynical, but he does say, at length, I was so overwhelmed by the weight of so many and such competent witnesses that I have been compelled to believe and wonder over a matter. William!

So he's like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure, but so many people claim to have seen this. So I don't know. But there's doubt, there's suspicion. This is a story everyone is talking about. So we have Woolpit surrounded by the wolf pits. We have them bringing in the harvest. And we have these two children coming through the field.

And the most notable thing about them is that they are apparently green. And not just green-skinned, green-cloth are apparently green and not just green skinned green clothes like they are literally just green also just to again i'm sure this will come up but just to put a pin in it for a moment aliens medieval aliens i'll just leave it there stay tuned Wendy's small frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn. Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves.

Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, Sir Richard de Karn.

There, it quickly becomes clear the pair are in a dreadful state, virtually starving and exhausted. Food is brought out for them, bread and ale, but they brush it away, refusing to eat despite the concerned protests of those in Sir Richard's household. Finally, they spot some green beans and gesture that they would like them. The beans are split open.

The children hungrily devour their insides, but it will take more than this to help them. The boy in particular is languishing. His skin is now a pale green tinged with grey and he's weakening by the hour. Sir Richard insists that the pair are baptised. Then, afterward, the boy dies. The girl, however, is stronger than her companion. Over time, in Sir Richard's home, she learns to eat ordinary food and even to speak English. She's questioned and, when pressed, gives an account of how she and the boy, her brother, came to be there.

They are, she claims, from another land, St Martin's, a place where the sun does not shine and where everything, absolutely everything, is green. She and the boy were tending to their father's cattle, she says, when the herd wandered into a cave. They went in after them, only to hear the sound of church bells ringing from within. No, just no to this because I have many, many thoughts Number one thought is No Number two thought is

there is a child rotting in this story He goes from a green to a grey to an expiring Saint Martin's Martians He goes from a green to a grey to an expiring. St. Martin's Martians. I didn't even think of that. St. Martin's Martians. Oh, interesting. They are aliens.

I mean, they didn't know anything about Martians, but like, it's just interesting. So hold that location in your mind. Where? St. Martin's or Martians? St. Martin's, not the Martians. I mean, also, potentially, hold that in your mind. So I want to Martin's or Martin's? St. Martin's. Not the Martians. I mean, also, potentially, hold that in your mind. So I want to kind of do two things with this. I think the first thing

we need to ask is what does this story mean to the medieval people that hear it? Because to us, it is quite hilarious. These children are green and they only eat green foods.

Oh my God, yeah. I was so disappointed. I was like, and then there was green beans and I was like, oh my God. Yeah, yeah. And once the girl who survives,

once she stops eating green things exclusively, she becomes normal. Good for her. Civilised. Quote, unquote, normal. Also, feeding children ale. That's fine. Just a medieval period.

Medieval times. Probably healthier than the fresh water available. So, you know, I'd take it. I'm going to run through some theories with you. Some ideas, some elements of the story that I think for the medieval people, and we can talk about later of the story that I think for the medieval people, and we can talk about later theories in a minute, but for the medieval people,

I think this is what they would hear in the story. So the first thing, the first thing, green man. What do you mean? So the green man is a folk character. Yeah. And someone who is kind of comes in and out of Christianity and it's really hard to see what his position is. So he does appear in a lot of medieval churches in sculptures, you know,

the ceiling and the stone in the wood. And predates this? Well, I mean, he's a bit of a mysterious figure. He's probably pre-Christian. Yes. And certainly he's understood now to be like, separate from that, but someone who wanders in and he's very much part of like contemporary reimaginings of folklore but you see him in other medieval stories so you see him in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight so for anyone who doesn't know that plot very briefly this is a very very basic boiling down what is a really complicated story um but it's you know Christmas Eve and King Arthur's uh knights are all gathered to celebrate and in comes the huge green man and he's kind of made of nature. He's got ivy for a face and all this stuff.

And he challenges someone to chop his head off. So Gawain's like, this is easy, I'll do that. And he says, if I survive, I get to cut your head off in a year. And Gawain's like, well, that's not going to happen. Chops the guy's head off. Only the head rolls away and the green man just walks after it,

picks it up puts it back on and says see you next christmas you know and it's i mean it's a story about lots of things but it's a story about rebirth regrowth nature's cycles and things like that so i kind of my initial thought for the story was green man nature they've come out of the field yeah well not necessarily a land of green people but just that it's an idea about nature and you know we're this story is taking place during the harvest people are very much interacting with the landscape there's an idea of that relying on those cycles so much and this idea of you know you're so invested in rebirth you want your crops

to grow the next year so what does it mean then? The reason I'm sticking with this a little bit is because it's such a... It's actually... I'm laughing about it, but it's such a strange and unsettling image of this green child going less green than grey. That feels like it's potentially not nature-related, that it's something more moralistic.

Or that simply he's nature-dying. You know, you talked about him rotting a minute ago. I see it as rot. Well, that's so interesting because I hadn't thought of that. And I think the fact that they need to devour only green things, healthy, fresh food that's green to survive. But no, because then she takes the whatever, human food and the ale and stuff. And then she's fine.

So it feels to me like they're saying, it feels to me like they're saying, this is the death of, this should see the death of the old way that this young boy represents the, you would have believed in these silly things, these ridiculous things to go back to William. These folkloric things, these pre-Christian pagan things. Yeah, now watch them die away

and here, come my way, be this little girl and we shall nourish you, we shall feed you, we shall civilise you, we shall give you language with which to speak. And baptise you because he does. And baptise you. So we'll talk about these Christian elements because I think they're really important but some other ideas that I want to go

through before we get there. Are they foreigners? They speak with a different language yeah are they simply children from elsewhere who've been brought in you know the medieval period we talk about this community being very insular being very small but this is the era of crusades this is the era of international trade it's not necessarily as isolated a world as we previously imagine it to be are they simply is this just representing a fear of otherness a fear of foreign actually what what might a green person be to somebody who's not seen somebody from another land is this something about race specifically um food as a key theme here obviously thinking thinking about the harvest, bringing things in, that reliance on food.

There's also an early modern idea, and I guess this probably goes back into the medieval period, if not earlier, of this idea of being you are what you eat. There's a TV show on that. Yeah, definitely. Historic version of you are who you are. If you're out there and you're a producer,

get in touch. The children almost exclusively eat green things. They say they, well, the girl says they come from a green land. Presumably all the food is green. Everything's green too, yeah. And once she eats things that aren't green, the bread, the ale, when she starts to accept that food, she loses her green colouring.

So is there something there, just more broadly in the medieval world, about food, again, we're so in that period so reliant on fresh food and it's so easy for it to become corrupted there aren't the same ways of storing it you know if you're storing grain or whatever after the harvest then there's always the risk that rats will get into it and that kind of thing there's no refrigeration my only query on that point would be i wonder what their concepts of freshness were in relation to i'm talking about fresh food in relation to I'm talking about

fresh food in relation to our concept because obviously we have a really big thing of of food that's been tampered with in terms of hormones or in terms of pesticides whatever they don't have that same thing so and obviously you're talking about rat and disease which is obviously very very pertinent and life and death for them but all of their food is kind of fresh in a way. Yeah. But yeah, nonetheless, I think it has to feed into something got to do with that. The food seems to be hugely important to this story

and to how they're surviving or not surviving. Yeah. Next up, this might be my favourite bit, the bit I've been looking forward to, the cave in the story. She talks about the fact that they get to suffolk to wool pit because they come through a cave yeah they followed some cows in green cows green presumably i mean everything in their world is green they follow these cows in they hear some

bells christian christian church bells and of course think about the medieval soundscape at this point yeah bells are to call you to worship worship and to raise alarm and to mark high days and holidays. They are a sort of magical, useful part of the world. They are spiritual. They are functional. They're something you're going to hear a lot of. So their power, I think, would have been understood by people listening to this. And it's regulation.

And that they compel you to follow them. You must do this now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So interestingly, this isn't the only story in the medieval period

about people going through a cave, hearing bells, and coming out into a different world or accessing a different world. Now, the idea of a cave as a kind of portal, you know, that's something that is almost universal in human culture. And definitely we see it in like Neolithic and prehistoric cultures, people leaving weaponry in caves as well as, you know, other liminal spaces like streams and that kind of thing.

Leaving that kind of offerings or leaving the dead sometimes. So it's highly unique to this period. leaving that kind of offerings or leaving the dead sometimes. So it's hardly unique to this period. But the story, the other story that's really famous from this period, comes down from the antiquary William Camden, who writes, to be fair, a little bit later in 1586, about a cave that today is known as Peak Cavern in the Peak District up in Derbyshire.

In the medieval period, it was called the Devil's Arse. Okay. I mean... Yeah, yeah. I like that it's an arse of all things. Could have been anything. I'm going to read you William Camden's words here. Oh, go on. I think he was having a bit of fun with this cave. Well, I wonder.

He'd want to have something with the Devil's Arse. So the stories that are coming out of this area are very much the same, that people are being drawn into it and they are experiencing different worlds when they get in there. Drawn into the devil's arse. Yeah, so he says, he says, The devil's arse gapeth with a wide mouth,

and hath in it many turnings and retiring rooms, wherein, forsooth, Gervase of Tilbury, whoever that is, whether for want of knowing the truth, or upon delight, he had in fabling hath written that a shepherd saw a verily wide and large country with rivulets and brooks running

here and there through it and huge pools of dead and standing waters so he says that there's a shepherd who is drawn into the cave and sees an entirely different world in this big gaping devil's arse and this there's loads of accounts of it the wind passing through the devil's arse it's you know hilarity gaping do we have to use gaping it's what william camden says it's historically accurate so this idea of caves being magical spaces being spaces where you could access a different world yeah i suppose as well if we think about medieval society we talked about the church bells you know representing sort of civilization regulation the church is the center of everything it's where you go to get married to

be baptized to buried um if you go to any medieval church in britain today and you look in the porch there's all kinds of graffiti left in their prayers from ordinary people. They're incredible. Don't even get me started. That's a whole other episode. But people would do things like do their business deals in the porches of churches and leave a piece of graffiti almost like a signature as a way of sealing that with God as a witness. You know, so these are incredibly important spaces that regulate all aspects of life caves are kind of the opposite the natural sort of architectural opposite of it and they're spaces where i guess you could go to misbehave if you're an outlaw if you wanted to know people do yeah if you wanted to have extramarital sex you could meet your

partner in a cave you could um know, children can go and play without the regulation of their parents there. There's just all these different sort of opportunities that a cave represents. So I wonder if, for a medieval person hearing this story, the cave is naturally a place of otherness. It's something out of the way. I think it is.

I think you're right there. I think that holds danger, promise, excitement. It's a tantalising fear almost. It's almost too provocative not to want to know what's in the cave, gaping and all as it might be. Absolutely. Let's talk about Christianity now. So we talked about the bells calling the children,

calling them from the world they live in. Now, interestingly, the girl does say that in St. Martin's world, where she's from, everyone is Christian. But the knight whose household she goes into does insist that she's baptised just to be on the safe side. He doesn't really believe that. Green Christian is not the same as Christian Christian. Exactly, yeah.

Like, come on, we've got to be wolf pit Christian now. We're in Suffolk now, guys. So, yeah, I mean, I think the most obvious interpretation of the story is that it is Christian moralisation, that it's these two uncivilised, othered children. They are young enough to be moulded into Woolpit's

idea, this community's idea of civilisation, of good Christian upstanding members of the community. And the fact that the girl, so she's described, sometimes she's called Agnes, by the way. Sometimes she has a name, sometimes she doesn't. I mean, who knows if she even existed at all. Agnes turns up as a name an awful lot, doesn't it?

It does. We hear it a lot in stories, particularly in stories that we don't actually know names. So it's a bit of a Jane Doe name sometimes. Yeah, it's a lovely name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's nice. So there is a description that she stays in the community

in Sir Richard's household as a servant. Interesting that she's given that status. Yeah, so she's not put too highly. She can't come into this world and be inserted too high in the hierarchy, but she's allowed a little bit of respectability and protection as well in the household. There is, in some versions of the story, she does get married. So again, kind of moralistic,

like she slots into the role that women should have in the medieval world, if you're in the lower classes, to be subservient, literally a servant in this case, and to be part of a household, to be a wife and maybe a mother. What I think is really interesting, so Ralph of Coggeshall,

who was one of the chroniclers, he describes that, you know, he says she enjoyed continual good health. She ate various kinds of food. She lost her green colour. But she remained slightly loose and wanton in her conduct. Get over it, Ralph. Yeah.

But again, I think it's just that she retains the idea of uncivilisation and especially as a woman. Yeah, that has been in my mind actually going, why does the story have her survive? What is the, why should she, what's the narrative drive for her to survive and not for the young boy to survive? Because she needs to comply as a medieval woman. Now, we need to be upfront about the fact that medieval women had certain forms of agency. That is something that I'm thinking in terms of commerce. I'm thinking in terms of the world of work and finance and household management, the economy of the household.

So medieval women did have a certain amount of agency. And it's a bit of a myth that they were totally subservient subservient nonetheless in relation to men and boys they far more was expected of them yeah absolutely and the fact that she serves Sir Richard that she becomes someone's wife yeah and that it's her loose and wanton behavior that still is the problem yeah even though she's slotted into this world and she's, as you say, kind of given over to the roles that are assigned to her, she still retains an element of unruliness

that's hard to Christianise and hard to sort of quash in her, I think. Good on you, Agnes. Yeah, go Agnes. Green Agnes forever. Right, is there another piece to this story? So actually, this is the last that we hear of Agnes, that she is, you know, a bit of a pain, causing trouble in the village, but that she is settled in. And the story kind of peters out, which to me,

because of course the most interesting thing is their arrival and the fact that they're green. And once the boys died and she conforms and becomes non-green there's a sense that we've lost interest and to me that says maybe it's not a real story well it's definitely not a real story she was green yeah i'm not i'm not saying that she was green i am saying maybe there's some kernel of truth in this yeah i mean with most of these things, there is something, right? Yeah.

Even if it's a local woman who is wayward in the 12th, was it 12th century? 12th century, yeah, yeah. Then that might just be the, and she may well have been called Agnes, she may not, but that will have been a core to some of these stories.

The greenness may not. The greenness is an issue. So we have some later theories about what this story could be. So in Norfolk in the 16th century, there's the story of the babes in the wood, which is really similar. And of course, Norfolk and Suffolk,

not that far from each other in the big scheme of things. They're not. Geography's not my thing. So the babes in the woods is a kind of traditional folk story from just a little bit after this, a few centuries after. But it's the same thing. A boy and a girl lost in the Woods is a kind of traditional folk story from just a little bit after this

a few centuries after but it's the same thing a boy and a girl lost in the woods I think they die and they're covered with leaves by a robin or something

are they green? they're not green to the best of my knowledge they're Hansel and Gretel it is yeah and it comes into that kind of like medieval folk stories

nursery tales it's a little bit hard to sort of find the origins Hansel and Gretel get eaten well no they don't they nearly do they're not green though no

but there's just that consumption thing yeah yeah yes food being an issue in the 17th century though

we have the first mention of aliens so Martians so Bishop Francis Godwin another churchman of course he's a historian

he's a priest so So when is this? Sorry, 17th century. So the 17th century, in the 1620s, this Francis Godwin writes a book called The Man in the Moon, moon with an E on the end, love it. Mooney. Yeah, The Mooney, The Man in the Mooney, or A Discourse of a Voyager Thither.

And it's a kind of, basically it's a science... Discourse of a what? Voyage... Voyage Thither. Thither. Yeah.'s a kind of basically, it's a science... That's hard for an Irish person to say. Discourse of a what? Voyage... Voyage Dither. Dither. Yeah. Too many theatres. And it's, he gives himself a pen name and he's basically, it's a science fiction text, essentially. It's kind of imagining, you know,

outer space people. He references this particular story as evidence, his theory... Ralph's story, the Green Children story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Godwin's theory is that people on the moon, you know, the moon people, who may or may not be green, beam down somehow,

beam me up, Scotty, beam me down, Scotty, people, children specifically, to the human race. Children specifically? And they exchange them for human children. A bit like fairies. Changelings.

Yeah, similar idea. Now, talking about the race element here. So Godwin claims that the most prolific place these moon people are beaming people down is on a hill in North America. And he says that most of the Native Americans have been exchanged for their children and replaced with moon people.

Wow. What a strange take so weird and obviously deeply deeply racist but i think it's fascinating this idea of otherness again otherness in terms of human variety and races and then equating that to outer planetary otherness so we see that again which makes me think maybe going back to the green children's story that there's some kind of human level othering that there's no magical element that it is just an othering of people from outside that community maybe from outside the racial profile of the people in wool pit in the 1990s one paul harris who was writing for a publication

about supernatural strange unexplained phenomena, claimed that the children might have been Flemish orphans who were fleeing from a nearby town. Wait for it. So there was a battle in 1173 and he proposes that maybe their Flemish parents were killed in the battle. The name of the village, though, Farnham St. Martin. If you look on a map, it is a few miles away. Farnham St Martin in where? England? Yeah, it's a few miles away from Woolpit.

Oh, OK. So half the children come from down the road. Why were they Flemish and they were from down the road? Who knows? I don't get it. But he also says the green skin colour might be explained as a condition called chlorosis, which is a kind of anemia resulting from dietary deficiency. Although I will say this has been kind of disproved by doctors who don't really recognise that. It's also been disproved by me.

You're saying it's not true. No. So what do you think? Fact or folklore? I think there's elements of fact that have informed folklore. Is that enough on the fence? Yeah. Were they green?

No, they weren't green. I want them to be green. No, but I still have in the back of my mind this idea of Indigenous American cultures being spoken about as this other as well and associated with colour and different places. So there's something about race potentially there too. So there's something.

And women and waywardness and regulation and control. All of that is history that comes together to form this mad green myth. I think that was a good place to end. Well, I'm done. If you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and we will be back again next time with another tale of possibly green

or multicoloured people. Who knows? That's exclusively what we do now. Send us your green people stories. Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. well thank you for listening to this episode of after dark please follow this show wherever you

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