Who or what was said to have arrived in the Suffolk village of Woolpit in the 12th century?

Despite seeming like the stuff of fairytales, there is at least some historical evidence for this strange event, although the first account of it only appears some decades later in the writings of William of Newburgh and Ralph of Coggeshall. After that there were only sporadic mentions of it before a spurt of renewed interest in the 19th century.

The story goes that at some time in the 12th century this sleepy little East Anglian village (whose name, incidentally, means not "wool pit" but "wolf pit") was visited at harvest time by two children, a boy and a girl, who spoke a strange language, would only eat raw broad beans and were - well, green!

The girl appears to have fared better than the boy, who sickened and died. She learnt how to speak English, and said that they came from a place she called "St Martin's Land". Tempting as it may be to link this to Mars (traditional if not scientific domain of "little green men"!) the girl (so the story goes) described it as subterranean.

Though aspersions have been cast on her morals, she is said to have integrated into English life, lost her green tinge, and married.

Explanations vary from the mundane (arsenic poisoning) to the extra-terrestrial, and perhaps it is worth mentioning that they appeared at harvest time and green figures are often linked, in legend, to fertility.

But we will probably never know the real truth of this story!