Latest / Ridiculous History / Two Green Children Mystified Woolpit, England
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
- 0:27Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
- 0:30Speaker 1: tuning in. It's your favorite. Quentin Quarantino's back again. Uh,
- 0:35Speaker 1: and you know my name is still Ben. My name
- 0:38Speaker 1: is no man. I was not expecting that. That was good.
- 0:41Speaker 1: It was a good another one like quarantine dogs. Yeah,
- 0:44Speaker 1: that's a good Here's just there's just way better. Um
- 0:49Speaker 1: uh no, I got nothing. It's good to see you again.
- 0:52Speaker 1: Uh you're shining visage peering at me through my laptop screen. Yeah,
- 0:57Speaker 1: it's good to see you. Oh you're nol still I
- 0:59Speaker 1: am know, I am no. And the way my windows
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- 1:04Speaker 1: you bigger real quick. I want to really get a
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- 1:09Speaker 1: there I are and over there, suproducer casey pegram in
- 1:13Speaker 1: the right panel of my Skype window. How about inglorious mascards.
- 1:18Speaker 1: You're once upon a time in quarantine. Oh my gosh,
- 1:24Speaker 1: she's on fire. So okay, uh so uh quarantine land
- 1:30Speaker 1: quarantine would perhaps there we go, Okay, okay, we'll we'll
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- 1:46Speaker 1: are a man of impeccable sartorial or fashion taste. And
- 1:50Speaker 1: uh you have you have not let your game slip
- 1:54Speaker 1: while we're in our exiles, because you have one of
- 1:57Speaker 1: America's favorite T shirts on right now. That is true.
- 2:01Speaker 1: I am wearing the podcast of the very podcast we
- 2:04Speaker 1: are recording right now. I'm the guy at the show
- 2:06Speaker 1: wearing the shirt of the band. Um, except I'm in
- 2:09Speaker 1: the band, so that's even worse. I I, on the
- 2:11Speaker 1: other hand, am full nude have been the whole time. Guys, Yeah,
- 2:15Speaker 1: I had. I had to minimize that window. Okay, that's fair.
- 2:17Speaker 1: And uh and I do want to point out for
- 2:20Speaker 1: everybody who's thinking, is Casey wearing that Casey on the
- 2:24Speaker 1: Case shirt with him as a child model. No, no,
- 2:27Speaker 1: he didn't go that far. Now he's just wearing the
- 2:29Speaker 1: classic Ridiculous History t available now. Uh and and always
- 2:35Speaker 1: on t public dot com slash Ridiculous History. I think
- 2:38Speaker 1: is that how it comes something like that, stuff like
- 2:40Speaker 1: that we'll get the link up. That'll get you to
- 2:42Speaker 1: the neighborhood. Yeah, that'll get you in the neighborhood. Today,
- 2:45Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a classic all its own,
- 2:49Speaker 1: a classic mystery. This may be a deep cut for
- 2:52Speaker 1: some folks, But if you, like many of us, were
- 2:56Speaker 1: a fan of those old paranormal or conspira ratorial time
- 3:01Speaker 1: life books like Mysteries of the Unknown, then you may
- 3:04Speaker 1: have heard of these strange children, these literally green children.
- 3:11Speaker 1: No no, I wanted to ask you, would you would
- 3:13Speaker 1: you characterize this as a complete legend? Would you say
- 3:18Speaker 1: there's probably something to it? Or should we do you
- 3:21Speaker 1: want to wait until the end of the show to
- 3:24Speaker 1: make a claim or a judgment. Oh my gosh, Ben,
- 3:27Speaker 1: It's it's hard to even say whether it's any one
- 3:30Speaker 1: of those things more than the other. It's kind of
- 3:33Speaker 1: more than any other story I've ever really dug into
- 3:37Speaker 1: a lot of all of them, um, and it's still
- 3:39Speaker 1: hard to this day to decide which one it is
- 3:42Speaker 1: more of. Wouldn't you say? Yeah? Yeah? And we want
- 3:46Speaker 1: we want to hear from you, fellow ridiculous historians, after
- 3:49Speaker 1: we after we explore this, let us let us know
- 3:52Speaker 1: what you think. I know, we always say that, but
- 3:54Speaker 1: this is this is something that we we definitely want
- 3:57Speaker 1: to hear more of because this this story kind of
- 4:01Speaker 1: like True Detective Season one, like a much lighter version.
- 4:04Speaker 1: This story skirts the supernatural without ever fully going supernatural.
- 4:10Speaker 1: Here we are the legend of the Green Children of Woolpit.
- 4:13Speaker 1: It starts during the reign of a guy named King
- 4:16Speaker 1: Stephen in a time in England's history in the mid
- 4:20Speaker 1: twelfth century called the Anarchy. What do we know about Wolpit. Well,
- 4:26Speaker 1: we know a little bit about Woolpit. We know that
- 4:29Speaker 1: it is an English town in England, obviously, and it
- 4:34Speaker 1: comes from the Old English word for wolf pit um
- 4:37Speaker 1: it is in Suffolk. Uh, and that is what it
- 4:39Speaker 1: was named after. Is these actual physical traps or pits
- 4:43Speaker 1: that were used for catching wolves because that was a
- 4:46Speaker 1: thing at the time. Wolves wild wolves roaming the the heaths. Uh,
- 4:51Speaker 1: We're we're kind of a problem. And they would not
- 4:53Speaker 1: only kill like your live stock, you know, your sheep
- 4:56Speaker 1: and whatnot, but they were known to to come into
- 4:59Speaker 1: villages and stuff if at night and kill like, you know,
- 5:02Speaker 1: sleeping children. Maybe I'm being alarmist here, but definitely a
- 5:06Speaker 1: serious business. So there would be these pits that were
- 5:08Speaker 1: dug into the ground um sometimes reinforced with stones almost
- 5:12Speaker 1: like a well, not quite as deep, and the wolf
- 5:14Speaker 1: they'd be covered up sometimes with like you know, straw
- 5:17Speaker 1: or what have you to to disguise them, and then
- 5:19Speaker 1: the wolves would fall in. Yeah, that was the namesake
- 5:22Speaker 1: of this town in Suffolk, which is the kind of
- 5:25Speaker 1: main location of our tail. Yeah. So this is this
- 5:29Speaker 1: is fascinating. No, I want to address the point that
- 5:32Speaker 1: many of our many of our listeners in the audience
- 5:36Speaker 1: are already thinking of, which is this, Do wolves typically
- 5:41Speaker 1: attack humans? The answer is no, But that's it. The
- 5:45Speaker 1: answer is a no, asterik or no. But because wolves
- 5:49Speaker 1: will definitely attack humans if we're all collectively experiencing some
- 5:54Speaker 1: form of privation during times of famine, and there's you know,
- 5:58Speaker 1: during times when these predators can't access other sources of nutrition.
- 6:04Speaker 1: Of course, if driven to desperation, they'll go for people,
- 6:07Speaker 1: and they'll go for livestock first. So a lot of
- 6:10Speaker 1: those wolf catching pits, which, as you said, no, our
- 6:13Speaker 1: real thing a lot of was wolf catching pits were
- 6:15Speaker 1: for livestock, but wolves were known to attack people. The
- 6:20Speaker 1: weird thing about wolpit is that this was not really
- 6:24Speaker 1: the middle of the of nowhere place in the Middle Ages.
- 6:28Speaker 1: The village of Wolpit was actually in one of the
- 6:31Speaker 1: most agriculturally productive regions of the land, as well as
- 6:36Speaker 1: one of the most densely populated areas. It belonged to
- 6:41Speaker 1: the abbey of Bury St. Edmund's, which was tremendously rich
- 6:46Speaker 1: and powerful. Uh So, what we've set the stage, this
- 6:50Speaker 1: is where the story occurs. But we also want to
- 6:53Speaker 1: tell you a little bit about how we know the
- 6:56Speaker 1: story because we don't have any first hand evidence of this.
- 7:01Speaker 1: It's it's cobbled together from a couple of different reports. Yeah,
- 7:04Speaker 1: that's right. One of them came from a person by
- 7:07Speaker 1: the name of Ralph Kogeshal and then another person by
- 7:10Speaker 1: the name of William of Newburgh, and they were the
- 7:14Speaker 1: two UM will call them primary sources that UM had
- 7:18Speaker 1: accounts of this tale that were then stitched together by historians.
- 7:23Speaker 1: UM and uh well, actually, let me be backtrack on that.
- 7:26Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily firsthand at all. Um, they were anecdotal,
- 7:30Speaker 1: But they are the only two people that we know
- 7:32Speaker 1: about that we're around to write about it. And there
- 7:35Speaker 1: are some pretty wide swings UM about when this story
- 7:39Speaker 1: took place. For example, one version might say that it
- 7:43Speaker 1: took place during the reign of King Stephen another and
- 7:47Speaker 1: that was eleven thirty five to eleven fifty four. Another
- 7:50Speaker 1: might attribute it to happening during the reign of King
- 7:53Speaker 1: Henry the Second, which was eleven four to eleven eighty nine. UM.
- 7:58Speaker 1: And it was the kind of story or that was very,
- 8:01Speaker 1: very regional until around eighteen fifty when Thomas kite le
- 8:06Speaker 1: Um put together a compendium called the Second Edition of
- 8:11Speaker 1: Fairy Mythology that contained um, a telling of this story.
- 8:16Speaker 1: And before that, um, it had really been something that
- 8:19Speaker 1: you could only get, you know, in Latin tomes um.
- 8:22Speaker 1: And in the twelfth century a book called Historia rare
- 8:27Speaker 1: Um Anglicicarum, and that was by Newburgh and uh then
- 8:31Speaker 1: Ralph Cogeshaw's volume Cornicon anglic Um. Yeah yeah, yeah. So
- 8:37Speaker 1: this is also, by the way, the fun part of
- 8:40Speaker 1: this is that both those guys, William Ralph it's William
- 8:44Speaker 1: of Newburgh and Ralph of koga Shaw. They they were
- 8:48Speaker 1: in that period where your name would have an O
- 8:51Speaker 1: in front of it, so it would be like Casey
- 8:53Speaker 1: of Pegro, which I sound. I think sounds pretty classy
- 8:56Speaker 1: and I would love to bring that back. You know,
- 8:58Speaker 1: Noel of Brown been Boland. Uh, you know it's got
- 9:02Speaker 1: some pinash, some gravitas. So, as you said, yes, for
- 9:06Speaker 1: a long time, this only came from those two twelve
- 9:10Speaker 1: century sources. But after Thomas Kitlie brought this out to
- 9:15Speaker 1: the English speaking world in the eighteen hundreds, it was reprinted.
- 9:20Speaker 1: It was adapted or embellished and put into all these
- 9:25Speaker 1: anthologies of fairy tales and British folk tales. And it
- 9:30Speaker 1: even got to the point where when you would read
- 9:32Speaker 1: the their version of regional guide books, who would also
- 9:35Speaker 1: say like Wolpit famous for the Green Children, and have
- 9:39Speaker 1: a little paragraph about the legend and this story, which
- 9:44Speaker 1: I know, we're telling you the story of the story,
- 9:46Speaker 1: but we'll get to this actual story. This story took
- 9:50Speaker 1: off because this story was um, it was mimetic. People
- 9:55Speaker 1: love to tell it, they love to hear it, and
- 9:57Speaker 1: it was very difficult to prove or disprove. So we
- 10:01Speaker 1: have to we have to ask ourselves again the question
- 10:04Speaker 1: we were talking about at the top. Ultimately, we're on
- 10:07Speaker 1: amission to determine whether this story is a folk tale
- 10:11Speaker 1: or some embellished version of actual history, you know, like
- 10:14Speaker 1: the way a grain of sand can get all this
- 10:16Speaker 1: stuff layered onto it and make a pearl. We want
- 10:19Speaker 1: to see if there's a grain of truthful sand in
- 10:22Speaker 1: this fantastic story. But here we go Once upon a time.
- 10:28Speaker 1: Maybe I'm biasing people here, but I like the way
- 10:30Speaker 1: the story starts. Once upon a time, there were these
- 10:33Speaker 1: two kids, a boy and his sister, and they're found
- 10:37Speaker 1: at harvest time near some ditches that have been dug too,
- 10:42Speaker 1: you guessed it, trap wolves at St. Mary's of the
- 10:46Speaker 1: wolf bits now known as wolpit, and they were found
- 10:49Speaker 1: by agricultural workers reapers like literally dude swinging sides back
- 10:55Speaker 1: and forth, but not like of the grim variety. These
- 10:58Speaker 1: were like potentially a beat reapers, yea, although these were
- 11:02Speaker 1: pretty tough times. You know, they might have been a
- 11:04Speaker 1: little bit grim, but but not harbingers of death itself. Yes, yes,
- 11:08Speaker 1: good point. Yeah, reapers get a bad name in uh
- 11:12Speaker 1: these are modern days, so imagine this. These wolf trapping
- 11:16Speaker 1: pits have been dug and they're pretty deep because you
- 11:18Speaker 1: don't want wolves to jump out of them. But these
- 11:23Speaker 1: kids come out of one of these pits, and this
- 11:28Speaker 1: is weird because the pits were probably twice as tall
- 11:30Speaker 1: as the children. There were a couple hundred square feet
- 11:33Speaker 1: in total area. So how did they get out? That's
- 11:37Speaker 1: one weird question. But there was a much weirder question
- 11:40Speaker 1: that needed to be addressed first, and that was the
- 11:43Speaker 1: skin color of these kids. Yeah, they had a certain
- 11:46Speaker 1: greenish hue to their skin. Um, which is you know,
- 11:50Speaker 1: it's already weird that they kind of emerged from these pits,
- 11:53Speaker 1: Like this story is already set up to be the
- 11:55Speaker 1: stuff of legend, right, Like, there's no question about there's
- 11:58Speaker 1: a lot of details that really lend themselves to um
- 12:02Speaker 1: what's the word, not alarmism, but embellishment, let's say. Or
- 12:05Speaker 1: you can really hop on. Oh, they had green skin,
- 12:08Speaker 1: and they came out of these like ten ft deep pits,
- 12:10Speaker 1: and they were really spooky, and they came took by surprise,
- 12:13Speaker 1: and we're probably levitating. I don't know, Um that that
- 12:16Speaker 1: that last part I made up, But yeah, it's true.
- 12:19Speaker 1: They had this greenish tinged skin. They were wearing odd
- 12:22Speaker 1: looking clothes. They spoke in an unintelligible language, unintelligible at
- 12:27Speaker 1: least to these merry reapers. Um. And so, yeah, super
- 12:32Speaker 1: strange little kids, creepy kids wandering up out of the
- 12:35Speaker 1: clear blue sky, out of the deep, deep dark wolf pits.
- 12:39Speaker 1: And what's a reaper to do when faced with a
- 12:41Speaker 1: situation like this, Ben, Well, they took them to the
- 12:45Speaker 1: village and they said, you know, these are weird kids,
- 12:50Speaker 1: but they're still definitely kids. They look human. So somebody
- 12:54Speaker 1: helped them out and they took them to a local landowner,
- 12:58Speaker 1: Sir Richard Decane at Wilkes. Now, Richard Decaye is the
- 13:03Speaker 1: one who, for those of you keeping track at home,
- 13:05Speaker 1: Richard Decayane is the guy who allegedly gave the information
- 13:11Speaker 1: to our earlier people who write the books, those two guys.
- 13:15Speaker 1: So Richard is allegedly the primary source, and he notices
- 13:20Speaker 1: some weird stuff. First, their diet, the kids. You know,
- 13:25Speaker 1: you're an adult, you see some kids wandering in the woods.
- 13:27Speaker 1: You want to feed them. But these kids, despite looking
- 13:31Speaker 1: famished and starving, they would not eat any of the
- 13:35Speaker 1: food presented to them. And so the entire picture this,
- 13:40Speaker 1: the entire village is trying to go through their larders
- 13:43Speaker 1: to find something the green, the green kiddos will eat,
- 13:46Speaker 1: and one of them eventually brings around some beans that
- 13:49Speaker 1: had just been harvested, and the kids love them. What
- 13:53Speaker 1: kind of beans, we may be wondering, glad you asked? Uh?
- 13:57Speaker 1: And what This is a point where the stories differed.
- 13:59Speaker 1: One story says their fava beans. Another one says, no,
- 14:02Speaker 1: that's bs their green beans, and the kids didn't get
- 14:06Speaker 1: them from the villagers, They just ate them straight out
- 14:09Speaker 1: of the ground. Well wait, so that means that maybe
- 14:12Speaker 1: this is a version of the story where they were
- 14:14Speaker 1: kind of fending for themselves, are like foraging, and maybe
- 14:17Speaker 1: the the kindly village folk had not found them yet
- 14:20Speaker 1: or what's the deal there? It sounds like in this
- 14:23Speaker 1: version of the story, it sounds like the kids they
- 14:27Speaker 1: tried to feed the kids, and then they let the
- 14:29Speaker 1: kids wander around and the kids foraged. Uh and only
- 14:33Speaker 1: eight beans for months and months, and then they expanded
- 14:37Speaker 1: their culinary horizons and eventually started eating bread. But it
- 14:42Speaker 1: doesn't say how many months went by. And you gotta
- 14:44Speaker 1: wonder how long can a person survive on beans? You know?
- 14:48Speaker 1: I mean I like a bean, Don't get me wrong,
- 14:50Speaker 1: It's a good staple food. But yeah, I see another
- 14:52Speaker 1: version of the story to where they specifically had a
- 14:56Speaker 1: taste for raw beans that were freshly harvest it as well,
- 15:00Speaker 1: So it may have been that, you know, whatever the
- 15:02Speaker 1: freshly picked crop was, that was what attracted the kid's eyes,
- 15:06Speaker 1: and the fact that they were green beans. Wonder if
- 15:09Speaker 1: there's a little creative license and that telling of the story.
- 15:12Speaker 1: It also makes me wonder, you know, you hear about um,
- 15:14Speaker 1: a lot of fairy folk will get to this and uh,
- 15:17Speaker 1: you know, supernatural creatures from this part of the country
- 15:20Speaker 1: that we're green, like the Green Man and a lot
- 15:23Speaker 1: of like you know, woodland fairies that are green. I
- 15:25Speaker 1: wonder if the jolly green giant, you know, canned vegetables
- 15:30Speaker 1: came from many of this lore. Kind of bet it dead.
- 15:33Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's an interesting point. Yeah, because the the
- 15:36Speaker 1: green Man or the vegetable God is an ancient, ancient belief,
- 15:42Speaker 1: so I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of carries
- 15:45Speaker 1: over into this story. That's that's a plus folklore reference there, man. Uh,
- 15:50Speaker 1: so we know that Richard raises these kids, or he
- 15:55Speaker 1: at least allows them to live with him, and he's
- 15:58Speaker 1: he's the big guy in town because he's landowner. He
- 16:01Speaker 1: lets them live on his estate for several years, and
- 16:05Speaker 1: slowly he tries to convert them to eating normal food.
- 16:10Speaker 1: According to our earlier sources, the ones in Latin, this
- 16:15Speaker 1: change in diet eventually led to them losing their green complexion.
- 16:22Speaker 1: And also let's bring in some modern science here. Research
- 16:26Speaker 1: does show that people who eat large quantities of certain
- 16:30Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables can show a change in skin color,
- 16:33Speaker 1: but it's more toward a golden, healthy glow. M m.
- 16:39Speaker 1: You know this is actually true. And I say this
- 16:41Speaker 1: from experience. I had a piano teacher when I was
- 16:43Speaker 1: younger who had cancer and uh, she went a very
- 16:48Speaker 1: holistic route in her treatment and was prescribed lots of
- 16:52Speaker 1: high in um, you know, nutrient vegetables, and she ate
- 16:56Speaker 1: lots of carrots and drank lots of carrot juice and
- 16:59Speaker 1: she actually developed kind of an orange ish color like
- 17:03Speaker 1: And that's that's that's that's absolutely true. Yeah, that can happen.
- 17:06Speaker 1: It's called karro toonemia, and it's apparently most notable on
- 17:11Speaker 1: thick skin like the soles of your feet, for example.
- 17:15Speaker 1: It's caused by an excess of beta carotene in the blood. This,
- 17:20Speaker 1: this is weird. There there are a couple of other
- 17:22Speaker 1: strange skin color stories we can get to, but with
- 17:25Speaker 1: these folks, it was so long ago that we don't
- 17:28Speaker 1: have the science. But it appears that the folklore is
- 17:31Speaker 1: building or implying an argument that whatever these kids were
- 17:36Speaker 1: eating before they showed up, it was somehow partially responsible
- 17:41Speaker 1: for their green skin color. But they didn't. They didn't
- 17:44Speaker 1: adjust very easily, did they know, No, they really didn't.
- 17:49Speaker 1: Then Um, the the girl proved to be a bit
- 17:52Speaker 1: more resilient, but unfortunately the boy Um became sickened and
- 17:57Speaker 1: and for lack of a better term, depressed and kind
- 17:59Speaker 1: of distance chanted, and he eventually did Um did pass
- 18:03Speaker 1: away due to this illness. Uh, maybe because of malnourishment.
- 18:08Speaker 1: We we don't really know. But Um. Thankfully, the sister
- 18:12Speaker 1: Um remained in pretty good health and her skin Um
- 18:17Speaker 1: went returned to a normal shade and lost that green tinge. Uh.
- 18:21Speaker 1: And that is when she began to pick up English.
- 18:25Speaker 1: Because you'll recall that we we mentioned that both of
- 18:28Speaker 1: them spoke what to the villagers that found them was
- 18:32Speaker 1: a gobbledygook and some kind of like alien tongue, right, Um,
- 18:36Speaker 1: And so she eventually started picking up after you know,
- 18:38Speaker 1: she was taken in by this household um, and she
- 18:42Speaker 1: started telling some stories, didn't she? Yes, here is our
- 18:46Speaker 1: second once upon a time, You're right, nol As. As
- 18:51Speaker 1: this kid learns to speak English, she becomes increasingly articulate,
- 18:56Speaker 1: and she starts to tell the villagers and tell Richard
- 18:59Speaker 1: the land donor the story of her origin. This was
- 19:04Speaker 1: called St. Martin's Land, at least that's what it's called now.
- 19:09Speaker 1: And in St. Martin's Land, according to this girl, everything
- 19:13Speaker 1: and everyone was green. It was always twilight. According to her,
- 19:18Speaker 1: this boy who had recently passed away was in fact
- 19:20Speaker 1: her brother. Now here's where the stories differ. We're going
- 19:24Speaker 1: to do our best to give you the multiple versions
- 19:27Speaker 1: or differences. In one version, she says that she and
- 19:31Speaker 1: her brother have been hurting livestock for her father, and
- 19:35Speaker 1: they heard a loud noise and they found themselves suddenly
- 19:39Speaker 1: at the bottom of this wolf pit. But then there's
- 19:43Speaker 1: another report that that's a little different, right, Yeah, there
- 19:47Speaker 1: there are. Like I said that this is one of
- 19:48Speaker 1: those things that you have to take with a grain
- 19:51Speaker 1: of salt, because not only were the sources that we
- 19:53Speaker 1: know of not firsthand, it's been passed down and really
- 19:57Speaker 1: treated like the stuff of lore. So it really is
- 19:59Speaker 1: the kind a thing where it's really hard to say
- 20:01Speaker 1: where the truth ends and the fiction begins and vice versa.
- 20:09Speaker 1: So yeah. Yet another version of the story has the
- 20:12Speaker 1: children um being transported from their their homeland uh St.
- 20:19Speaker 1: Martin's Land um to the field where they were found
- 20:23Speaker 1: or two to the wolfpit rather um when they hear
- 20:26Speaker 1: the sound of bells and they're transported to this cave.
- 20:31Speaker 1: When they come out, they realize that they're in Woolpit
- 20:35Speaker 1: and not good old St. Martin's Land um, and that
- 20:39Speaker 1: they you know, the blinding lights you know, kind of
- 20:43Speaker 1: like uh hits their eyes and they realize we're not
- 20:47Speaker 1: in Kansas anymore, um because they had apparently, according to
- 20:50Speaker 1: this version, wandered in darkness for quite some time. Not
- 20:54Speaker 1: to mention, there's a part that's consistent and several of
- 20:58Speaker 1: these stories that the girl tells her host family that St.
- 21:02Speaker 1: Martin's Land, where they come from, as a land of
- 21:04Speaker 1: permanent twilight, right right. Yeah, As they had mentioned before,
- 21:09Speaker 1: this was one of the details that was consistent, along
- 21:12Speaker 1: with her statement that everyone and everything in St. Martin's
- 21:17Speaker 1: Land was green. So there we go. We can already.
- 21:22Speaker 1: Also see some familiar folklore tropes, like the old Joseph
- 21:26Speaker 1: Campbell thing. The cave you fear to enter holds the
- 21:28Speaker 1: treasure you seek. Uh. There's a lot of powerful symbolic
- 21:33Speaker 1: stuff going on here. Back to Ralph and Willie, their
- 21:38Speaker 1: stories differ in some notable ways. William says that this
- 21:44Speaker 1: girl called her home St. Martin's Land, and he says
- 21:49Speaker 1: that she said, see, we're playing a telephone game already.
- 21:52Speaker 1: He says that she said everyone there venerated and worshiped
- 21:56Speaker 1: the St. St. Martin. And this is interesting because St.
- 22:01Speaker 1: Martin was known to the surface world. I'm planting a
- 22:04Speaker 1: seed there. St. St. Martin was known uh in Western monasticism.
- 22:09Speaker 1: He had a November feast day. He had a harvest
- 22:12Speaker 1: festival in particular, and his festival was comparable to Halloween.
- 22:18Speaker 1: And William said that inhabitants could see, even though they
- 22:22Speaker 1: were in a twilight realm, they could see a bright
- 22:26Speaker 1: land over a great river. William's story also cuts out
- 22:30Speaker 1: the cavern and just says that the kids literally heard
- 22:34Speaker 1: the bells and then woke up in the wolf pit. Oh,
- 22:37Speaker 1: we should mention that Richard, by the way, it was
- 22:40Speaker 1: a little out of order. But uh, we'd be remiss
- 22:43Speaker 1: if we didn't note one of the first things that
- 22:45Speaker 1: Richard did when the kids were under his care, he
- 22:48Speaker 1: took them to be baptized. It's kind of like medical
- 22:52Speaker 1: care right for them at that time. Yes, that that's
- 22:57Speaker 1: probably right. They think it's gonna ooculate them against the
- 23:01Speaker 1: forces of evil or whatever. I don't know. The reason
- 23:03Speaker 1: I knew about it is that, like they don't know
- 23:06Speaker 1: anything about the these children's heritage or where they come from,
- 23:10Speaker 1: or what their faith might be. It's just very presumptuous,
- 23:13Speaker 1: is all I'm saying. I guess right, right, which also
- 23:15Speaker 1: makes you wonder how much of a how much of
- 23:19Speaker 1: the narrative has been twisted to meet religious expectations of
- 23:24Speaker 1: the time, because they're they're in what appears to be
- 23:28Speaker 1: a subterranean realm that already has maybe not knowledge of
- 23:33Speaker 1: Catholic dogma, but they all know one saint in particular.
- 23:37Speaker 1: That's that's odd. Yeah, that that is really weird, right,
- 23:40Speaker 1: that they know of one saint that we're gonna get
- 23:42Speaker 1: into kind of the unraveling of this story. But you
- 23:45Speaker 1: gotta wonder too, if, like you know, was their concern
- 23:48Speaker 1: that these were somehow like demons from the fiery pits
- 23:51Speaker 1: of hell. You know, they come from a pit at
- 23:54Speaker 1: the very most a subterranean realm. I don't know. I
- 23:57Speaker 1: if I was a truly, truly god fairyman like like
- 24:02Speaker 1: this gentleman likely was, that might give me pause. I'd
- 24:05Speaker 1: be like, get thee to a baptis serie, you know,
- 24:08Speaker 1: postaste or an exorcism mart or whatever they call them. Right,
- 24:13Speaker 1: surely they had those then, yeah, yeah, yeah, they were
- 24:16Speaker 1: just farmers markets. They were just like like you know,
- 24:18Speaker 1: there were just a stall at the farmer's market next
- 24:20Speaker 1: to the produce. You've got like a priest who can
- 24:23Speaker 1: exercise your your demons, maybe even exercise your vegetables before
- 24:26Speaker 1: you take them home with you. It's a drive through too,
- 24:28Speaker 1: or a trot through, so you can take your horse
- 24:30Speaker 1: if you're in a hurry, and you know, you don't
- 24:32Speaker 1: have to get out of the saddle. That's that's the
- 24:34Speaker 1: one you want to look for in the mark. So
- 24:37Speaker 1: there you have it. Now, Now the next question. So
- 24:39Speaker 1: the young boys died, but what happened to the mysterious
- 24:43Speaker 1: green girl. According to the story, which I know, we're
- 24:46Speaker 1: we've been saying a lot in this episode. According to
- 24:48Speaker 1: the stories, the Green Girl eventually assimilates into society. She's baptized. Uh.
- 24:56Speaker 1: There are rumors that she later marries someone in an
- 25:00Speaker 1: adjacent county, Norfolk, near Suffolk, who may have been high
- 25:05Speaker 1: up in the government all the time, although there are
- 25:08Speaker 1: some other reports that I would say are way less verifiable.
- 25:14Speaker 1: Although none of this is verifiable, there are conflicting reports
- 25:16Speaker 1: that you know, really showcase the misogyny of the day
- 25:20Speaker 1: and say she became quote rather loose and wanton in
- 25:23Speaker 1: her conduct. I'm sorry, loose and wanton. Is that like
- 25:28Speaker 1: referencing her sexual proclivities? Perhaps, right, that's what they're saying. Yeah,
- 25:33Speaker 1: they're saying she grew up and got around. Uh. And
- 25:36Speaker 1: then again again, my grown is not for her, My
- 25:39Speaker 1: grown is for the judginess of these people, right right again? Yeah,
- 25:42Speaker 1: like I said, the misogyny of the time. Uh. She
- 25:45Speaker 1: may have taken the name Agnes bar B A r
- 25:49Speaker 1: R E. But there's no there's no definitive evidence. Uh.
- 25:54Speaker 1: We we know one report of the guy she married.
- 25:57Speaker 1: He's uh an archdeacon. I think, yeah, that's right, archdeacon
- 26:01Speaker 1: of Eli. A man by the name of Richard bar
- 26:05Speaker 1: Um and according to one account, they had at least
- 26:09Speaker 1: one child. What color was the kid? Unclear unclear? Yeah,
- 26:15Speaker 1: well what that just means opaque? Okay, Yeah, because you
- 26:21Speaker 1: know one thing, we let's get into this. So that's
- 26:23Speaker 1: a really good segue. Ben Um, Why were they green
- 26:27Speaker 1: in the first place? Yeah. So if and this is
- 26:30Speaker 1: a big, big i F if the story is based
- 26:34Speaker 1: on something that was true, there are a couple of
- 26:38Speaker 1: plausible explanations behind this green, greenish hue. One theory is
- 26:44Speaker 1: arsenic poisoning, because you know, arsenic has been used to
- 26:49Speaker 1: create green dies in the past, and if you are
- 26:53Speaker 1: exposed to it, it can give your skin this green
- 26:58Speaker 1: dotted rash. But the weird thing is, if we think
- 27:03Speaker 1: it through at this time in history in England, if
- 27:07Speaker 1: you found some kids you didn't know and they had
- 27:11Speaker 1: something that looked like a disease, you would be way
- 27:15Speaker 1: less likely to do the Christian thing and help them out,
- 27:20Speaker 1: because you wouldn't want to expose your own community to
- 27:23Speaker 1: things that could literally kill everyone you love within a
- 27:27Speaker 1: matter of weeks or months. You know, leprosy, measles, smallpox,
- 27:32Speaker 1: all the hits, all the terrible grim and grizzly hits. Yeah,
- 27:35Speaker 1: it's true. I mean, yes, it's it's it really puts
- 27:38Speaker 1: into perspective what we're dealing with right now. I mean, like,
- 27:40Speaker 1: I've had this bit of a cold and turned into
- 27:43Speaker 1: some bronchitis for going on three weeks now, and as
- 27:45Speaker 1: this uh you know, coronavirus situation hit in, just having
- 27:48Speaker 1: a bit of a cough really started to turn some heads, um,
- 27:52Speaker 1: just in terms of like suspicion towards me as as
- 27:54Speaker 1: a human being walking around. So at this time, when
- 27:57Speaker 1: I mean there were so many potentially absolutely obliterating um
- 28:04Speaker 1: diseases like you mentioned, Uh, there would certainly be some suspicion,
- 28:08Speaker 1: right uh. And and it makes you really gives you
- 28:10Speaker 1: pause as to why they would have just taken in
- 28:14Speaker 1: these oddly colored children with such open arms, if they
- 28:18Speaker 1: even caught a whiff that there might be something wrong
- 28:20Speaker 1: with their health. Absolutely, and there may have been something
- 28:25Speaker 1: wrong with their health, because remember, one piece of evidence
- 28:28Speaker 1: we have is that their skin color changed when their
- 28:31Speaker 1: diet changed, right. Uh. We we have a couple of
- 28:34Speaker 1: other theories that might explain their green coloring. What what
- 28:39Speaker 1: was it called clurosis kind of like chlorophyll or something.
- 28:43Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Yes, it comes from the Greek word chlorus,
- 28:47Speaker 1: which refers to a greenish yellow color. Um. And and
- 28:52Speaker 1: this is something that that has been this is that
- 28:54Speaker 1: this is a funny part of the story here, Uh,
- 28:55Speaker 1: that has been observed for for centuries past. There's a
- 28:58Speaker 1: German doctrine by the name of Johanna's Langa who in
- 29:01Speaker 1: the sixteenth century UM referred to this disease as something
- 29:06Speaker 1: called a disease of virgins um. And he said the
- 29:10Speaker 1: remedy was to go have you some sex. Yeah, that'll, that'll, that'll,
- 29:14Speaker 1: that'll knock it, that'll knock it right out. Uh. And
- 29:17Speaker 1: now you know, and yeah, it is now in the
- 29:19Speaker 1: twentieth century, UM, we now realize that it has more
- 29:24Speaker 1: to do with with malnourishment and should be treated with
- 29:28Speaker 1: iron supple It's sort of like scurvy, which is a
- 29:30Speaker 1: lack of vitamin cy But I'm thinking of when you're
- 29:32Speaker 1: jaundiced and you have a yellow complexion to your skin.
- 29:35Speaker 1: Doesn't that also have something to do with malnourishment or
- 29:38Speaker 1: what does that? As a result of am I completely
- 29:40Speaker 1: misconstruing them. Yeah, so jaundice can have a couple of
- 29:44Speaker 1: different causes. It turns it turns you yellow because you
- 29:47Speaker 1: have a high level of this stuff called uh viola ruben,
- 29:52Speaker 1: which is a bile pigment. It can come from the hepatitis,
- 29:56Speaker 1: come from gallstones, tumors. Uh, it's to gross. Yeah, I
- 30:00Speaker 1: mean it's it's a rough thing to have. But you're right,
- 30:02Speaker 1: it can also come from diet. So, first off, I
- 30:06Speaker 1: want to say Dr Lange calling this a disease of
- 30:10Speaker 1: virgins and prescribing sex as secure sounds like it sounds
- 30:14Speaker 1: troubling because it sounds like he might have been writing
- 30:17Speaker 1: that to a specific patient. You know what I mean?
- 30:20Speaker 1: Pretty gross. Yeah. So so there we go. There is
- 30:24Speaker 1: some science and we know that there are a couple
- 30:27Speaker 1: of different ways in which people through privation can turn
- 30:33Speaker 1: green or their skin color can noticeably visibly change. But
- 30:36Speaker 1: our next question is, okay, cut past the legends, cut
- 30:40Speaker 1: past the endlessly fascinating folklore. Who were these children, assuming
- 30:46Speaker 1: they are real, and where did they really come from?
- 30:50Speaker 1: Here is where a one publication that always loved forty
- 30:56Speaker 1: in studies comes into play through an author named Paul Harry. Indeed,
- 31:01Speaker 1: Harris suggested in a book hero called four June studies
- 31:04Speaker 1: for from nineteen that the children could have been Flemish
- 31:10Speaker 1: refugees UM who were absolutely uh persecuted in the in
- 31:14Speaker 1: these days. And then they would have come from a
- 31:16Speaker 1: nearby UH town, our village called Forum St Martin. Does
- 31:22Speaker 1: that ring a bell? St? Martin Uh? And that would
- 31:25Speaker 1: have been um separated by a a quite substantial river
- 31:29Speaker 1: from Wolpe, the River Lark. And remember that part of
- 31:32Speaker 1: the story about being able to see a bright shining
- 31:35Speaker 1: light across a formidable river Um. And yeah, a lot
- 31:39Speaker 1: of these Flemish. There's there's an excellent article on Ancient
- 31:42Speaker 1: Origins dot net that really digs into some of the
- 31:45Speaker 1: different um potential explanations behind this phenomenon of the Green
- 31:48Speaker 1: children of Wolpit, and one of them is this is
- 31:51Speaker 1: this tale that goes into the history of the Flemish
- 31:55Speaker 1: persecution under King Henry the Second in eleven seven three,
- 32:00Speaker 1: many of them were killed in a place near St.
- 32:04Speaker 1: Barry St. Edmund's Uh in the Battle of Forum Um.
- 32:09Speaker 1: And many of the folks who survived this massacre really
- 32:12Speaker 1: was an absolute blood bath fled into the forest, Thetford
- 32:16Speaker 1: Forest to be specific, and what would be an area
- 32:20Speaker 1: that feels like perma twilight. Ben right the forest. So
- 32:25Speaker 1: here's the thing that this brings up to important points. First,
- 32:29Speaker 1: ancient origins dot net is this account is good for
- 32:34Speaker 1: the legend or speculative aspects. There's not a lot of
- 32:37Speaker 1: science there, so if you are working on a report
- 32:42Speaker 1: for school, be sure be sure to uh note that
- 32:46Speaker 1: when you're using it as a source. A second question,
- 32:49Speaker 1: how old were the children specifically? Other than that the
- 32:53Speaker 1: boy was appeared to be younger than the sister, we
- 32:55Speaker 1: don't have a specific age for them. So if you
- 32:59Speaker 1: are a very young child, then of course Thetford forest
- 33:02Speaker 1: may have seemed like permanent twilight. It's an old growth forest. Uh. Secondly,
- 33:07Speaker 1: you know maybe your parents, fearing war, would have taken
- 33:11Speaker 1: you like told you to herd livestock and acted like
- 33:14Speaker 1: everything was okay when they were just trying to get
- 33:16Speaker 1: you away from the conflict. It's also true that because
- 33:22Speaker 1: the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds was established and wealthy,
- 33:26Speaker 1: they had the ability to ring loud bells, so loud
- 33:31Speaker 1: bells often chimed. You could probably hear them over the river.
- 33:35Speaker 1: But it's possible this comes from a mental flass article.
- 33:39Speaker 1: It's possible that the children have been orphaned in the conflict,
- 33:42Speaker 1: had been foraging on something that gave them a poor diet,
- 33:48Speaker 1: lead to malnutrition and green skin, and eventually made their
- 33:51Speaker 1: way to woolpit by following the sound of the bells.
- 33:55Speaker 1: And so then like that actually sounds plausable, doesn't it.
- 34:00Speaker 1: It doesn't have all the secret, uh, conspiratorial supernatural elements.
- 34:06Speaker 1: It sounds like hazard of war. And you know, we're gonna,
- 34:09Speaker 1: we're gonna raise the bar one more wrung on some
- 34:13Speaker 1: of the conspiratorial angles in just a second. But to me,
- 34:16Speaker 1: this one very much is uh the tragically most realistic
- 34:21Speaker 1: scenario as that that these were um children who were disoriented.
- 34:26Speaker 1: Not to mention the fact that a lot of the
- 34:28Speaker 1: folks in these different Flemish villages would have had their
- 34:32Speaker 1: own very specific dialects um that would have been completely
- 34:37Speaker 1: unintelligible to two outsiders, you know. In the same way
- 34:41Speaker 1: we have communities like the Irish travelers in Augusta, Georgia
- 34:47Speaker 1: edge field area, for example, where they speak a very
- 34:50Speaker 1: specific form of Gaelic. You know that that's very alien
- 34:54Speaker 1: to even you know, Gaelic speakers. This is an interesting
- 34:59Speaker 1: point because what does unintelligible mean. We have to remember
- 35:03Speaker 1: that people were far less likely to have intense and
- 35:09Speaker 1: or significant interactions with folks speaking a different language. They
- 35:13Speaker 1: were also far less likely to be literate, and they
- 35:16Speaker 1: were far less likely to just recognize something even if
- 35:20Speaker 1: they didn't understand it. So all bets are off there.
- 35:23Speaker 1: This is a time when a lot of people lived
- 35:25Speaker 1: and died within mere miles of where they were born.
- 35:28Speaker 1: So let's look at an historian named Derek Brewer in
- 35:32Speaker 1: his book The Color Green. Also in so note that
- 35:36Speaker 1: this was a resurgence in the story. Uh. Derek Brewer
- 35:40Speaker 1: argues that the likely core of the matter is that
- 35:43Speaker 1: these very small children hurting or following flocks strayed from
- 35:47Speaker 1: their village didn't speak very much. Maybe they were so
- 35:51Speaker 1: young and uh, the way we put it in modern
- 35:54Speaker 1: times is they didn't know their home address, and they
- 35:57Speaker 1: weren't like the kids in the movies who have a
- 35:59Speaker 1: note pay into them that says, hey, my house is
- 36:02Speaker 1: you know, one to three wool Pit Street or one
- 36:05Speaker 1: of those tags. Remember they used to be like special
- 36:08Speaker 1: tags that kids would have on their backpacks, you know,
- 36:10Speaker 1: almost like that was a thing back in the day.
- 36:13Speaker 1: I don't think it's so much. Well, nowadays kids have like,
- 36:16Speaker 1: you know, phones and stuff and you can just like
- 36:18Speaker 1: geo locate them. But um, yeah, you absolutely they would
- 36:21Speaker 1: have just kind of been lost and and and in
- 36:23Speaker 1: the in the wild and uh, depending on the kindness
- 36:26Speaker 1: of strangers. And thankfully they did get a little bit
- 36:28Speaker 1: of help. Um, but yeah, it's true. It was really
- 36:31Speaker 1: just this. This, this version of the story is also
- 36:33Speaker 1: pretty sad. Brewer, by the way, also is a proponent
- 36:43Speaker 1: of the clurosis deficiency theory. So there we have it. There,
- 36:48Speaker 1: we have the plausible explanation for the Green Children. But
- 36:51Speaker 1: let's get weird with it. Let's look into just briefly,
- 36:55Speaker 1: let's look into all the crazy stuff, because that's that's
- 36:59Speaker 1: the exciting stuff, right So now, Dawn your tinfoil hats
- 37:04Speaker 1: with us or aluminum foil, I guess. Let's look at
- 37:08Speaker 1: Robert Burton, who in sixteen twenty one, in his book
- 37:12Speaker 1: The Anatomy of Melancholy, suggests that the Green Children quote
- 37:16Speaker 1: fell from heaven. This, this is true. This author did
- 37:20Speaker 1: say this back in sixty one, and it's set the
- 37:24Speaker 1: stage for later Uh, independent researchers or authors or whatever
- 37:29Speaker 1: you want to call them to say, hey, what if
- 37:32Speaker 1: these kids were aliens? Yeah, this guy named Duncan loanan
- 37:36Speaker 1: uh um in an article published in Analog magazine in
- 37:41Speaker 1: the late nineties. UM he hypothesized, will use that term
- 37:46Speaker 1: loosely here. I guess, I guess, I guess that's appropriate.
- 37:48Speaker 1: That they could have accidentally been teleported or transported in
- 37:53Speaker 1: some way from their home planet to wolpets um and
- 37:58Speaker 1: and and he conjecture that their home planet may have
- 38:02Speaker 1: been trapped in some sort of synchronous orbit around the Sun.
- 38:05Speaker 1: Um and that it would have been a planet that
- 38:10Speaker 1: had similar conditions that would have allowed life, and also
- 38:13Speaker 1: had a kind of um sweet spot between having an
- 38:18Speaker 1: inhabitably hot surface and a frozen dark side, such as
- 38:23Speaker 1: the dark side of the moon. Yeah, yeah, dark sided moon.
- 38:25Speaker 1: That's a that's a good comparison. I also made me
- 38:28Speaker 1: think of it made me think the author might have
- 38:31Speaker 1: been implying mercury as an origin point. Interestingly enough, scientists
- 38:38Speaker 1: discovered a few decades back that there is actually water
- 38:43Speaker 1: ice on mercury deep in these craters. Uh. And we're
- 38:47Speaker 1: still figuring out how it forms, So mercury would be
- 38:50Speaker 1: an interesting answer. But notice that he kind of he
- 38:55Speaker 1: duncan Lunin kind of skips over the part where they
- 38:58Speaker 1: got from wherever the extraterrestrial origin point was to whole
- 39:03Speaker 1: bit England. Uh. We have to say one other thing.
- 39:07Speaker 1: This is I think one of the more fun fantastical elements,
- 39:12Speaker 1: the Green Children. It has so many tropes about the
- 39:17Speaker 1: unseally as they might be called in Gaelic or Irish culture,
- 39:20Speaker 1: or the h the fair folk. What if these were
- 39:23Speaker 1: elves or faye from some other dimension, the land of
- 39:28Speaker 1: the fairy. It's weird because interpreting the story this way
- 39:33Speaker 1: really hits on little specifics that sound kind of added
- 39:38Speaker 1: into the story. Like you know, in fairy mythology, fairies
- 39:43Speaker 1: never eat mortal food. Yeah, that's even like that's even
- 39:46Speaker 1: a thing. And uh in Pan's Labyrinth, for example, where uh,
- 39:50Speaker 1: the heroine Um is presented with that that table of
- 39:54Speaker 1: food and she's a warren never to eat it, and
- 39:57Speaker 1: she eats it and it's like considered to be a
- 39:59Speaker 1: terrible taboo. Her little fairy companions are really freaked out
- 40:02Speaker 1: by this whole thing. Um not not quite the same,
- 40:04Speaker 1: but yeah, no, it's true. Like it's almost like there's
- 40:06Speaker 1: various versions of that trope or like if the fairies
- 40:08Speaker 1: eat human food, it could kill them, or or it
- 40:11Speaker 1: could render them powerless, or they could lose lose their
- 40:14Speaker 1: fairy abilities or what have you. Um, So it's almost
- 40:16Speaker 1: as though these were that that's why they rejected the
- 40:20Speaker 1: human food. Uh, except you know, I don't know. But
- 40:24Speaker 1: if it's beans though, like that's grown from the ground.
- 40:28Speaker 1: I mean that seems pretty fairy friendly to me, does
- 40:31Speaker 1: it doesn't? I don't know. You know a lot of troops,
- 40:34Speaker 1: fairies or or the fade don't actually eat meat. They
- 40:38Speaker 1: have practice of vegetarian or what we call a vegan diet.
- 40:42Speaker 1: It's interesting to two things that makes me think of
- 40:45Speaker 1: just as an armchair folklore is here. Uh. The Faye
- 40:49Speaker 1: also traditionally fear instruments of iron. Their iron reverse but
- 40:55Speaker 1: iron supplements fix cleurosis. As nothing you do with anything
- 41:03Speaker 1: of the Charlie Day meme. Right now, you know where
- 41:06Speaker 1: I'm lining up stuff on the board. Uh, then do
- 41:10Speaker 1: you do you do you think your aversion to handling
- 41:12Speaker 1: metal potentially points that you may have some fairy blood
- 41:16Speaker 1: in you. That's I don't know, man, I don't know,
- 41:20Speaker 1: because I eat meat, you know, that's true. Yeah, you're
- 41:24Speaker 1: just half fairy, have just half a you know. I
- 41:27Speaker 1: I'd be okay with that. Everybody needs a little supernatural
- 41:30Speaker 1: in their lives right now though, No casey. As you
- 41:34Speaker 1: guys know, Uh, this story has largely been dismissed as
- 41:40Speaker 1: a an entirely fabricated tale of folklore. And that brings
- 41:45Speaker 1: us to the question we we started at the top.
- 41:48Speaker 1: So uh, my my friends, I want to give you
- 41:51Speaker 1: all the honor. What do you think? Do you think
- 41:56Speaker 1: complete fabrication? Do you think troublingly plu possible? Or do
- 42:01Speaker 1: you think maybe grain and truth embellished over centuries. I mean,
- 42:06Speaker 1: like I said, the version of the story um where
- 42:09Speaker 1: they were Flemish refugees, uh that were kind of expelled,
- 42:14Speaker 1: um in fear of their lives in too, to live
- 42:17Speaker 1: in another kind of more wooded area that they call St.
- 42:21Speaker 1: Martin's Land. Uh. It makes sense that that that sounds
- 42:24Speaker 1: like the way a child would describe something during a
- 42:28Speaker 1: time of trauma, you know, and and and and all
- 42:30Speaker 1: they could say was St. Martin's Land, and it was
- 42:33Speaker 1: always twilight. They were just describing it in terms they
- 42:35Speaker 1: could understand, you know, and and having to process like
- 42:38Speaker 1: losing their parents, losing their way of life, I mean,
- 42:41Speaker 1: you know, And we also don't know exactly how old
- 42:43Speaker 1: they were. It doesn't seem like they were like babies.
- 42:45Speaker 1: I mean they had to. If they were helping ten flock,
- 42:47Speaker 1: they probably would have been maybe minimum seven eight years old,
- 42:51Speaker 1: you know, maybe more like ten eleven, right, So they
- 42:54Speaker 1: would have had a very real understanding for the most
- 42:58Speaker 1: part of what was happening to them, but it would
- 43:00Speaker 1: have been so painful and traumatic that they might have
- 43:02Speaker 1: had to process it differently. Not to mention that they're
- 43:04Speaker 1: malnourished and you know, kind of wandering around in the
- 43:08Speaker 1: in a in a time where it was not very
- 43:09Speaker 1: safe to do so. Yeah, and the fact that we
- 43:13Speaker 1: know the male child was younger means it may have
- 43:17Speaker 1: been a situation where the parents sent the girl to
- 43:22Speaker 1: look after the livestock, but also watch your little brother.
- 43:26Speaker 1: That's that's something that a lot of our a lot
- 43:29Speaker 1: of our fellow listeners who grew up with siblings will
- 43:32Speaker 1: doubtlessly be familiar with, and thankfully we do have it
- 43:36Speaker 1: as the inspiration for a lot of fiction poetry. Um,
- 43:41Speaker 1: you know, these kind of fairy tropes and it is
- 43:44Speaker 1: you know Ben and I in in hosting stuff they
- 43:46Speaker 1: don't want you to know. Um. We run into stories
- 43:49Speaker 1: all all the time like this, where there's usually a
- 43:51Speaker 1: very plausible explanation, but it's the implausible versions of the
- 43:55Speaker 1: story that cause it to proliferate, uh and spread like wildfire,
- 43:59Speaker 1: because that's what capture people's imagination. Not the sad tale
- 44:03Speaker 1: of two wandering orphans you know that fall into a
- 44:07Speaker 1: wolf pit. Uh, it's the version of it that like
- 44:09Speaker 1: there's somehow supernatural beings from a subterranean land that, let
- 44:14Speaker 1: you know, or or from another planet that really gets
- 44:16Speaker 1: people thinking. And the fact that there's so many varying
- 44:20Speaker 1: versions of this story just adds to that. Yeah, agreed,
- 44:23Speaker 1: And this is where the story draws to a close.
- 44:28Speaker 1: We want to hear from you, let us know where
- 44:30Speaker 1: you fall. Do you believe that this was some sort
- 44:33Speaker 1: of supernatural encounter? Do you, like Casey Nolan myself, think
- 44:38Speaker 1: that this is more a as I said earlier, game
- 44:41Speaker 1: of telephone over the centuries, But you know, ultimately the
- 44:45Speaker 1: story of war refugees and maybe most importantly, do you
- 44:51Speaker 1: have any other uh stories from folklore that you think
- 44:57Speaker 1: have a grain of possible ruth to them. If so,
- 45:01Speaker 1: we'd love to hear them. You can find us on Facebook,
- 45:04Speaker 1: you can find us on Instagram. You can find us
- 45:06Speaker 1: on Twitter, not just as a show, but as individual people. Yeah,
- 45:11Speaker 1: you can find me exclusively on Instagram. Uh, it's it's
- 45:15Speaker 1: a lot of memes that I'm posting and a lot
- 45:17Speaker 1: of just you know, I've been playing a little bit
- 45:19Speaker 1: of guitar again. I might post some Instagram stories of
- 45:22Speaker 1: my nerdy guitar synth set up making some ambient music
- 45:27Speaker 1: to call me down in this time of of uncertainty
- 45:29Speaker 1: and chaos. And you can find all that stuff for
- 45:31Speaker 1: me at how Now Noel Brown on Instagram And let
- 45:34Speaker 1: us know what's your what's your hobbies are with things
- 45:36Speaker 1: that are keeping you from kind of going crazy are
- 45:39Speaker 1: right now during this time. You can send those as
- 45:41Speaker 1: an email to us at Ridiculous at iHeart radio dot com. Yeah,
- 45:44Speaker 1: and you can also find our Facebook community page, Ridiculous
- 45:48Speaker 1: Historians for sharing your stories with our favorite part of
- 45:52Speaker 1: the show, your fellow listeners. Uh. As an individual, you
- 45:56Speaker 1: can find me at Ben Bowling on Instagram. You can
- 45:59Speaker 1: find me at it or at Ben Bowling hs W.
- 46:02Speaker 1: On a personal note, one thing that I'm doing on
- 46:04Speaker 1: Twitter right now is fielding questions about prepping, about survival,
- 46:10Speaker 1: about hygiene, love in the time of coronavirus. So if
- 46:15Speaker 1: there's something that you want to know about, if I
- 46:18Speaker 1: don't have the answer, I will work ardently to find
- 46:20Speaker 1: it for you, So don't hesitate to hit me up
- 46:22Speaker 1: on Twitter or Instagram. And as always, before we go,
- 46:26Speaker 1: we want to give a big thank you to our
- 46:28Speaker 1: our super producer, uh the best dressed man on the
- 46:32Speaker 1: Skype call. That's Mr Casey Pegram. And we'd also like
- 46:36Speaker 1: to thank Alex Williams who made this banging track. You
- 46:38Speaker 1: here at the beginning and the end. Huge thanks to
- 46:41Speaker 1: Gabe Lozier for being our research associate extraordinaire. Christopher Haciotes
- 46:46Speaker 1: here in spirit Eves Jeff Coach. Check out this day
- 46:49Speaker 1: in History class produced by our pal Chandler Mays. And
- 46:52Speaker 1: thanks to you know, thanks to you, specifically you for
- 46:57Speaker 1: tuning in. We hope that you are happy, healthy, safe,
- 47:01Speaker 1: and not turning green. See your nice time, folks. For
- 47:13Speaker 1: more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
- 47:15Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
- 47:18Speaker 1: favorite shows.