The Green Children of Woolpit: a weird allegory of isolation, otherness and belonging

The English folk legend of the Green Children of Woolpit has enduring appeal. First appearing as a wonder tale in the medieval chronicles of William of Newburgh and Ralph of Coggeshall, the children’s story has attracted numerous retellings across a range of creative forms. The sudden appearance of the green-skinned brother and sister, dressed in strange clothes and speaking an unintelligible language, has been the subject of multiple theories, from the scientific to the speculative, with the children recast as fey folk, aliens, lost immigrants and malnourished foundlings. Focusing on two recent short story re-visionings of the tale, this creative-critical essay examines the legend through a consideration of the original tale’s landscape in Suffolk, and explores representations of otherness, gender and the nonhuman found in these retellings.