The Green Children of Woolpit: Chronicles, Fairies and Facts in Medieval England

The Folklore Society has shortlisted a book that analyses the mysterious appearance of 'Green Children' in the Suffolk village of Woolpit in the mid-twelfth century. The story has been interpreted, recounted, and reimagined by historians, folklorists, philosophers, and writers, and this book provides an interdisciplinary study of the events. It will interest medievalists and anyone interested in folklore and fairylore.

Format: Hardback
Length: 274 pages
Publication date: 13 August 2024
Publisher: University of Exeter Press

Shortlisted by The Folklore Society for The Katharine Briggs Award 2025, this book analyses 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. 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.

Weight: 584g
Dimension: 241 x 165 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781804131367