The Green Children of Woolpit
Two young children, a boy and a girl, arrived in the English village of Woolpit sometime in the middle of the 12th century. They appeared to have risen alone and puzzled from the "wolf pits" that gave the settlement its name. Their attire was unique, particularly in terms of color, and their language was unintelligible. The oddest aspect of all was the alien-like hue of green that their skin had. Unsure of what to do, the Woolpit villagers brought the kids to Sir Richard de Calne, a knight.
The kids would go days without eating. In fact, they regarded food as alien until one day when, by chance, they came across some freshly harvested bean plants and wolfed them down. They subsequently lost their green tint after being encouraged to eat other foods over time. Despite the boy being sick and passing away, the girl thrived.
After being baptized and given English language lessons, she was able to finally explain where she was from: Saint Martin's Land, a place with perpetual twilight where everything is green and from which, over a river, a place that was considerably brighter could be seen. She was unaware of how she had arrived at Woolpit. The last thing she remembered—which varies depending on the version—was either a loud noise while she and her brother were herding her father's cattle or she had followed the cows through a cavern and emerged (without them) into this realm.
The young woman developed into a "very wanton and impudent" young woman while continuing to live with the knight. She then got married and relocated forty miles away from Woolpit. Writers and thinkers looked back to the tale centuries later as proof of the "plurality of universes."
