Overview

Shortlisted by The Folklore Society for The Katharine Briggs Award 2025. Two medieval chroniclers, William of Newburgh and Ralph of Coggeshall, reported the mysterious appearance of a pair of ‘Green Children’—with green skins and speaking an unknown language—in the Suffolk village of Woolpit in the mid-twelfth century. The story is well known today, usually as a Suffolk folktale about fairies and a fairy otherworld. Retold many times, it continues to inspire novels, poetry, songs, plays, and even operas. This book analyses the story in its historical and geographical context, and considers the numerous ways in which it has been interpreted, recounted, and reimagined by historians, folklorists, philosophers, and writers. Folklorists have mined it for ‘folktale motifs’ without considering whether it is truly a folktale. Historians have used it as a key to understanding the motives of one or other of the two chroniclers who recorded it. ‘Fortean’ researchers have tried to find a convoluted core of historical fact. Returning to the two original Latin accounts, this book translates them afresh and analyses them side by side for the first time, allowing us to conclude that both writers were drawing on the same source. Such an interdisciplinary study is necessary when considering the many modern ‘explanations’ of the events that have been offered, from mundane to extraterrestrial. The volume presents an example of how extraordinary events reported by medieval chroniclers can be studied analytically, and will interest not only medievalists but anyone interested in folklore and fairylore—and perhaps inspire others to fresh reworkings of this perpetually intriguing story.

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9781804132395

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Reviews

[John Clark] gathers up the dust of centuries, tosses theories on the scales, adds appropriate filters, and, in a worthily nit-picking feat of all-round scholarship, rounds out the context for these mystery children and their subsequent fate in a way that no prior researcher has done. The text is as interesting for its intense questioning of elements as for the fascinating story itself. -- John Billingsley * Northern Earth * The Green Children of Woolpit is a comprehensive, meticulously referenced and fascinating delve into this most-beguiling of stories, for which John Clark should be highly commended. Crucially, it's also very readable. -- Edward Parnell * Fortean Times * This is an extensively researched and referenced study... It is a fascinating, and despite its deep scholarship, an accessible account of how stories and legends develop and are interpreted and exploited through antiquarian studies and modern re-workings.  -- John Rimmer * Magonia * Above all, we are confronted with the power of a well-told story. That’s what William and Ralph did in the 12th century—and what Clark does for his readers in the 21st. I recommend this book not only as an example of rigorous research—worthy of the most diligent scholar or the most obsessive detective—but also as a way to keep the story—and above all, the mystery—alive. -- Adriana Guillén Ortiz * Boletín de Literatura Oral * ...no one has ever known more about the Green Children than [John Clark]... The Green Children of Woolpit is a synthesis of history (academic and popular) with folklore, Fortean studies, and science fiction. There is nothing that Clark has not read in his search for the cultural reception of this story... -- Jeremy Harte * Folklore * Clark applies methodical precision to his material: he analyzes every claim and counterclaim. But despite the density of his research, his prose retains a lightness and ease that makes the book a hugely enjoyable read, ensuring its accessibility to a wide readership. While the story of the green children receives a forensic handling, Clark’s enjoyment of it, in all its metamorphic complexity, shines through. -- Sonia Overall * Preternature * The Green Children of Woolpit is a fascinating and well-researched piece of scholarship that will be of interest to a wide range of readers... Clark’s interdisciplinary background seems crucial to his nuanced analysis of the tale in its historical, cultural, linguistic, and geographical context. Moreover, the book proves interesting as much for Clark’s examination of previous analyses of the legend as it does for his exploration of the Green Children’s story. -- Maija Birenbaum * Supernatural Studies * The level of detail is impressive and there is no doubting the significant effort involved in assembling the information presented here. -- Stephen De Hailes * The Medieval Review * Clark’s exhaustive scholarship examines not only the two medieval accounts of the ‘Green Children’ but also the numerous later retellings and (mis)translations of their appearance in a twelfth-century Suffolk village. The result is a meticulous yet highly readable study, built upon the research of decades. -- Judges' report * The Katharine Briggs Award 2025 *

Author Information

John Clark was for many years curator of the medieval collections at the Museum of London. Since retiring in 2009, he has continued research, lecturing and writing on topics including the history and archaeology of medieval London, medieval folklore and legends and their relationship to ‘real’ history, and medieval horses and horse equipment.

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