Many theories have been put forward to try to explain who the Green Children were and where they came from; and many of these make the mistake of trying to explain the unexplained with the unexplained. Briefly, the most popular theories are:
1) They came from another dimension.
This idea is put forward by: Brad Steiger in 'Strange Disappearances', Harold Wilkins in 'Strange Mysteries of Time and Space', and Rodney Davies in 'Supernatural Disappearances.'
The idea is that the children lived in a world very similar to our own, existing somehow side by side with our world, but separate from it. None of these authors offer any explanation for how the children could travel from one world to the other.
2) They were from an underground kingdom of some sort.
This idea is put forward by: Margaret Rowan in 'House of Evil', Harold Wilkins in 'Strange Mysteries of Time and Space', and Rodney Davies in 'Supernatural Disappearances.'
Davies discounts this theory, because he says the Green Girl described her land as having a sky... something difficult to provide underground.
3) They were somehow transported from another planet to ours.
This idea is put forward by: Margaret Rowan in 'House of Evil', and Harold Wilkins in 'Strange Mysteries of Time and Space'.
While Rowan doesn't elaborate on this idea, Wilkins speculates that if Mars just happened to have humanoid beings living underground, they might be of a blue or green color. He offers no explanation on how the children could have traveled from Mars to Earth.
4) They were kept in total isolation and brainwashed with a false story, then turned loose.
This idea is put forward by: Brad Steiger in 'Strange Disappearances'.
Steiger himself discounts this theory; no one appears to have ever taken credit for the incident, and if it was a cruel hoax, then for what reason?
5) They were undernourished children who got lost in some flint mines.
This idea is put forward by: Jerome Clark in 'Unexplained!', and Paul Harris in an article in 'Fortean Times' #57.
Harris' theory goes like this: the children got lost in flint mines near the village of Fordham St. Martin, came out of mine shafts near Woolpit, and wandered around until they were found in the fields near the village. They spoke a local dialect of English that was immediately unintelligible to the villagers of Woolpit, but similar enough for the children to quickly learn the Woolpit dialect. Their skin was green because of a dietary deficiency -- possibly 'green chlorosis' -- and they quickly regained a normal hue when given a better diet.
6) It's all just an entertaining story from ancient England.
This idea is put forward by: Katherine Briggs in 'The Fairies', Malcolm South in 'Mythical and Fabulous Creatures', and Harold Wilkins in 'Strange Mysteries of Time and Space'.
Both Briggs and Wilkins point out that the story shows definite characteristics of known folk beliefs. Having both already stated that in their versions of the story the children either directly claim to be from underground or simply remember walking through a long tunnel, both Briggs and Wilkins then relate the story to ancient concepts of death and afterlife. Briggs points out that the beans the children first gorge themselves on are traditionally considered to be a food of the dead; and she also points out the similarity between the name for the children's homeland -- St. Martin's Land -- and the fact that witch's imps were often called Martins and/or Martinets, though I'm not sure what this last detail is meant to show.
A different folkloric point of view would be that the children's account of the trip from their homeland to Woolpit could be seen as an allegory for birth, rather than death. This thought was emailed to me by Melissa Leggett; she pointed out that the 'land of perpetual twilight' would be a reference to time in utero, the 'luminous country across a great water' would be the world past the placenta, and, no matter how the final trip is described, the exit from the wolf-pits would be the actual birth.
It should be noted that many authors attempt to show that the mysterious arrival of the Woolpit green children was not a singular occurrence; for instance, in 'House of Evil', Margaret Rowan states that "every now and then reports still come in of the arrival of green people from nowhere." Despite this rather sweeping statement, she only gives one example; a recounting of a UFO encounter story from 1955 in which the UFO occupants were described as glowing greenish, which is a rather thin attempt to imply a connection between the two events. The exact same approach is taken by Harold Wilkins in 'Strange Mysteries of Time and Space', when he relates the story to a series of UFO occupant sightings that he never goes into any real detail about.
Harold Wilkins, Brad Steiger and Rodney Davies all try to relate the incident to other reports of people who seem to appear from nowhere... but none of these other people were green. Davies also feels that, if the Green Children really did appear from nowhere, then whatever phenomena produced this effect could be the same that occasionally makes people from our world supernaturally disappear (if, in fact, they do).
I've only found one clear cut story that is undeniably similar to the Green Children of Woolpit story; that of a pair of green-skinned children being found in Banjos, Spain, in 1887. But this story is likely a direct steal from the Woolpit story, with just enough details changed to make it sound new [see also: Green Children of Banjos].
The very real problem with most of the theories above is that none of them agree on the basic details of the Green Children story -- such as how the children arrived in Woolpit, for example -- and the theories tend to rely heavily on the very same details. So what's the most correct version of the story?
