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Green children of Woolpit


clockworkgirl21

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_children_of_Woolpit

Two children appeared one day in the village of Woolpit, England in the 1100s. A boy and girl claiming to be siblings were totally normal, apart from having green skin. They spoke their own language and refused to eat anything other than green beans. Once they began eating other food they lost their green color, but the boy got sick and died after being baptized. The girl, once she learned English, explained that she and her brother came from St. Martin's Land, an underground place where everyone was green.

Sounds like a folk tale to me! But Wikipedia has some explanations if it turned out to be true:

Many Flemish immigrants arrived in eastern England during the 12th century, and they were persecuted after Henry II became king in 1154; a large number of them were killed near Bury St Edmunds in 1173. Paul Harris has suggested that the green children's Flemish parents perished during a period of civil strife and that the children may have come from the village of Fornham St Martin, slightly to the north of Bury St Edmunds, where a settlement of Flemish fullers existed at that time. They may have fled and ultimately wandered to Woolpit. Disoriented, bewildered, and dressed in unfamiliar Flemish clothes, the children would have presented a very strange spectacle to the Woolpit villagers.[23] The children's colour could be explained by green sickness, the result of a dietary deficiency.[1] Brian Haughton considers Harris's explanation to be plausible, and the one most widely accepted,[24] although not without its difficulties. For instance, he suggests it is unlikely that an educated local man like Richard de Calne would not have recognised the language spoken by the children as being Flemish.
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I was just reading about them the other day, it is now a tourist attraction for the town.

I think it's an interesting subject weather true or not, witness verification is great as well.

The account I read was by a priest who went to talk with the many witnesses including

de Calne who he felt was telling the truth.

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That is strange, although like the wikipedia page says it could just be a folk tale

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Ah yes, the good old 'Hypochromic anemia'. In the 16/17th.Cents it was knows as morbus virgineus (virgin's disease). Remedy? Get out there and get laid!

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Ah yes, the good old 'Hypochromic anemia'. In the 16/17th.Cents it was knows as morbus virgineus (virgin's disease). Remedy? Get out there and get laid!

Seriously

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  • 5 years later...

Sorry to resurrect this old topic, but I wanted to add some fule that may support this story. I just heard this legend today, and I was immediately reminded of exoplanet Gliese 667 cc. It is an exoplanet  in our back yard, only 23 light years from Earth. One hemisphere of this planet is permanently facing a red dwarf star.  It is theorized that intelligent life could have developed on a narrow band of the planet which is in permanent twilight where temperatures are temperate enough for liquid water to exist. FYI red dwarfs have life spans much longer than our own sun, which provide a greater amount of time for life to evolve. 

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3 hours ago, Neophoenixiim said:

Sorry to resurrect this old topic, but I wanted to add some fule that may support this story. I just heard this legend today, and I was immediately reminded of exoplanet Gliese 667 cc. It is an exoplanet  in our back yard, only 23 light years from Earth. One hemisphere of this planet is permanently facing a red dwarf star.  It is theorized that intelligent life could have developed on a narrow band of the planet which is in permanent twilight where temperatures are temperate enough for liquid water to exist. FYI red dwarfs have life spans much longer than our own sun, which provide a greater amount of time for life to evolve. 

What does that have to do with the story?

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Woolpit is just up the A14 from where I live in don't think I'd make a special trip to go there it's just a villiage nice church though and a bloke who sells parrots lives there

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  • 1 month later...

It always bothered me that the girl tells them where she's from despite arriving in Woolpit before she could even speak. What?

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  • 2 weeks later...

If the children were Flemish, maybe they were covered in green flegm.

Just a theory.

:whistle:

Edited by acute
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  • 1 month later...

I  was just reading about this in Nick Redfern book Secret History....Apparently these kids suffered from hypo chromic anemia...at least according to what I read..This condition is apparently caused by a very poor diet in the part that affects the red blood cells....The boy later died but from the account in Redfern book the girl went on to live a full life and her skin eventually turned normal....

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Green and would only eat green beans?  Well like the old saying goes, you are what you eat.  ^_^

Edited by Brandy333
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  • 1 month later...

Synchronicity: 1998. Me best pal & I find ripped-out coin compartment from phone box. Smash it with rock. Get sprayed with indelible green anti-theft jazz. Tell the rozzers we came from weird subterranean land. Sorted.

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It seems that the children lived underground with race of gnomes who are dressed in green and green themselves because they are associated with nature and plants. We do not even imagine what a huge role they play in nature and the cultivation of all fruits, vegetables and agricultural plants useful to us. In russian wikipedia it is said that the girl "was violent and unrestrained in her behavior". It's just that elemental beings have one mental element and a person has four (earth, water, air, fire) and therefore such creatures may seem immoral to us and have a spontaneous, unrestrained character due to the absence of three elements(Dion Fortune, "Psychic self defense"). Such creatures do not live long among people and it will be difficult for them to adapt to earthmen.

Or another explanation, somehow they were born of elemental beings.This happens if the child is conceived in an altered state of consciousness.

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4 hours ago, Coil said:


It seems that the children lived underground with race of gnomes who are dressed in green and green themselves because they are associated with nature and plants. We do not even imagine what a huge role they play in nature and the cultivation of all fruits, vegetables and agricultural plants useful to us. In russian wikipedia it is said that the girl "was violent and unrestrained in her behavior". It's just that elemental beings have one mental element and a person has four (earth, water, air, fire) and therefore such creatures may seem immoral to us and have a spontaneous, unrestrained character due to the absence of three elements(Dion Fortune, "Psychic self defense"). Such creatures do not live long among people and it will be difficult for them to adapt to earthmen.

Or another explanation, somehow they were born of elemental beings.This happens if the child is conceived in an altered state of consciousness.

Yes, these would of course be the most rational explanations one would go to. Because all those anti-Galenists from the Renaissance on were completely wrong and humoural theory hasn't been exploded in multiple forms since then.

Now excuse me: reading some of this has caused an excess of sanguinary humour and I need to be bled ere I work myself a mischief.

--Jaylemurph

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I think the problem is with it being 1100 it's an awful long time for the story to grow arms and legs and little bits to be added over the years.

It may very well be that there's a rational explanation such as the green sickness due to a dietry deficiency and the both of them having it as twins as they were both getting fed the same stuff at the same time every day from whoever was looking after them. 

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If you are familiar with thier story it is mentioned that the children are from underground. They emerged from a cave. Any nearby caves should be thoroughly investigated 

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47 minutes ago, NicoletteS said:

If you are familiar with thier story it is mentioned that the children are from underground. They emerged from a cave. Any nearby caves should be thoroughly investigated 

...it's just been a thousand years. I'm sure no one else has had that idea yet.

--Jaylemurph

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It's one of my favorite legends. I did some art based on it some years back. If there's any truth to it, it could have been almost anything. Child abuse and/or malnurishment was rampant back then. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn they had been kept locked underground or something.

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On 5/14/2018 at 4:46 PM, jaylemurph said:

...it's just been a thousand years. I'm sure no one else has had that idea yet.

--Jaylemurph

What idea? To read the actual story? Apparantly they said they came out of a cave from underground and lived in twilight. Not much of a leap to say yes they came from a cave. Obviously there would be more people down there.

Care to cite the results of this expedition since you are sure it occurred?

But yeah sadly enough people often do seem to have the idea to be a jerk for no apparent reason. Namely online to random strangers. Sad degeneration of our society. Making pointless comments just to point out their own character defects.

Edited by Nnicolette
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The story is from 1100, a long time ago. 

Stories over the years change, I very much doubt the latest version is close to the original.

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6 hours ago, NicoletteS said:

What idea? To read the actual story? Apparantly they said they came out of a cave from underground and lived in twilight. Not much of a leap to say yes they came from a cave. Obviously there would be more people down there.

Care to cite the results of this expedition since you are sure it occurred?

But yeah sadly enough people often do seem to have the idea to be a jerk for no apparent reason. Namely online to random strangers. Sad degeneration of our society. Making pointless comments just to point out their own character defects.

You're quite right. Thoughtless, uninformed, and childish demands to accomplish the obvious should be respected and not questioned in the slightest.

--Jaylemurph 

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Growing up, my dad always told me the story of "The Green Man", who lurked around parks at night and would tell you his story if you brought him a six-pack. My dad said he talked with him a few times and that his face really did appear green under the street lights. Turns out he was electrocuted years before and the scarring on his face took on a green tint. He eventually became something of an urban legend to the people in the area years later, as ghost or a ghoul patrolling the streets looking for naughty teenagers.

Anyways, my point is that these children probably existed with some sort of medical problem and over the years the story just got stretched a little. No paranormal or unexplained explanation for who or what they were.

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  • 1 month later...
On 5/18/2018 at 12:46 PM, jaylemurph said:

You're quite right. Thoughtless, uninformed, and childish demands to accomplish the obvious should be respected and not questioned in the slightest.

--Jaylemurph 

It was a joke. I was regurgitating the same bull**** the skeptics or more appropritely the deniers of everything like to throw at me every post. Don't tell me anything is fact if there is citation on the internet and demand I search it for you because you are uneducated or don' believe me... I can just as easily say the same back. Funny that you were to wrapped up in your own attitude to comprehend the sarcasm, but not at all suprising.

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