The Legend - Variations - Theories - Answers - Sources
Answers
As I mentioned above, there is a second account of green children being found; this event is said to have occurred near the town of Woolpit, England, sometime between A.D. 1135 and A.D. 1154, far pre-dating the 1887 account of the Green Children of Banjos. This similarity has been noted before; Rodney Davies, for example, points it out as suspicious in his book Supernatural Disappearances. The earliest account I've found of the Green Children of Banjos is in John Macklin's book, Strange Destinies (1965), and it contains details that show a far-too-close correlation to the best known account of the Green Children of Woolpit. It's quite likely that Macklin simply took the Woolpit story and just changed a few details to create a "new" account of green children.
The most commonly quoted account of the Green Children of Woolpit is from The Fairy Mythology, by Thomas Keightley, published in 1850... a complete copy of this account is in the notes section of my Green Children of Woolpit article. The Green Children story presented in Keightley's book is essentially the same as the Banjos account above: two green children wearing strange clothing, and speaking an unintelligible language were found near a pit near the town of Woolpit. The children were captured and taken to a local man's home, where they refused to eat until they were presented with fresh beans. The boy soon died, but the girl lived on, lost her green color and learned the language, and claimed to have come from a strange twilight land.
If this was all the resemblance there was between the two tales, it could be simply chalked up to a good story gaining different details with the re-tellings... something that happens all the time, and for which no one person can be blamed. But Macklin's account of the Green Children of Banjos contains details that are all too obviously borrowed directly from Keightley's account of the Green Children of Woolpit, ear-marking it as a deliberate falsehood.
The first thing to notice is the similarity in both accounts when describing the children's discovery of beans as a good food. In Keightley's account of the Woolpit children, we read:
| "...when some beans just cut, with their stalks, were brought into the house, they [the children] made signs, with great avidity, that they should be given to them. When they were brought, they opened the stalks instead of the pods, thinking the beans were in the hollow of them; but not finding them there they began to weep anew. When those who were present saw this, they opened the pods, and showed them the naked beans. They fed on these with great delight, and for a long time tasted no other food." |
Compare this to Macklin's account of the Banjos children, as quoted from a unspecified 'report' (highlights are mine):
| "...beans cut or torn from stalks were brought into the house, and they [the children] fell on them with great avidity. But they broke open not the pod but the stalks, evidently supposing that the beans were in the hollow of the stalks. When finding nothing, they again began to weep. Then someone showed them how to open the pods. Whereupon, with great joyfulness, they ate many beans -- and from then on would touch no other food." |
Clearly, the account in Macklin's book is just a paraphrase of the earlier Keightley account; and the use of the phrase "with great avidity" is undoubtedly a direct steal.
The general description in both accounts of the children as having come from a twilight land is a forgivable similarity, but further descriptions of this land that are only found in the Keightley account and the Macklin account are suspiciously similar. From Keightley's account of the Woolpit children, we are told that the girl said "...that there was a bright country which could be seen from theirs, being divided from it by a very broad river." Now compare to Macklin's account of the Banjos children, in which he quotes the girl as saying: "...there is a land of light to be seen not far from us, but cut off by a stream of great width." Again, the paraphrasing is very clear.
Keightley's account claims to originally be from a priest named William of Newbridge, who is quoted as saying that "he long hesitated to believe it [the story], but he was at length overcome by the weight of evidence." Compare this statement to a quote in Macklin's account that is attributed to an un-named priest from Barcelona: "I was so overwhelmed by the weight of so many competent witnesses that I have been compelled to accept it..."
The most glaring similarity, however, is in the name of the man whose home the children were taken to. In Keightley's account, the Woolpit children are taken in by a knight named Sir Richard de Calne; in Macklin's account, the Banjos children are helped by "the village's chief landowner," a man named Ricardo da Calno.
In the end, there is only one major difference between the two accounts: in Keightley's story of the Green Children of Woolpit, the girl survives to eventually marry, whereas in Macklin's story of the Green Children of Banjos, the girl dies after five years. This can be seen as a story convenience on Macklin's part; after all, if the girl was found in 1887 and survived to a good age, researchers would expect to be able to find lots more evidence for the story... instead, I have only John Macklin's word in his account that there were documents, reports, and sworn witness statements in existence at least as late as 1965, when his book Strange Destinies was published.
In light of the similarity of Macklin's 1965 Banjos account to Keightley's 1850 Woolpit account, it seems likely that Macklin simply copied and doctored the earlier story to suit his own purposes; but I will endeavor to locate documents concerning events in Banjos, Spain, in the 1880's to be doubly sure. And if any reader out there has found a version of the Banjos story that pre-dates 1965, I would be most interested in hearing about it. Until then, however, it appears that the real mystery lies not with the likely fictitious Green Children of Banjos, but with the earlier source of the story... the Green Children of Woolpit.
