Green children

I'm awfully glad this came up because I have a completely unrelated question that I'd like to throw out--perhaps anyone with an answer could contact me by email rather than clog up the list (I'm also going to query alt.mythology). John Crowley has a very short story, virtually a vignette, called "The Green Child" that he says is based on accounts by Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newbridge, both of whom say that it took place about the middle of the 12th c. in West Suffolk. Two pale green children, a girl and a younger boy, appear at a place called the Wolf Pits. A kind woman takes them in; the boy will eat only beans and eventually dies; the girl also drinks milk, survives, becomes less green and eventually marries someone. Well, I have heard this story before. Has anyone else? I even know where I read it, though I recall neither the title not the author of the book--it was a novella from a small press by a Brit sometime in the early 80s. And I conclude that it is a real West Suffolk legend. Can anyone help? Crowley barely bothers to embroider--the tale could be from a very good travel guide, though it has his customary poignancy. -alga

This is from my dad's copy of Reader's Digest's Mysteries of the Unexplained: Two children appeared from a cave near Banjos, Spain, in August 1887. Their skin was green, and their clothes were of an unfamiliar material. They could not speak Spanish, and their eyes appeared Oriental. At first they would not eat, and the boy died, but the girl survived and learned enough Spanish to explain that they came from a sunless land, where one day a whirlwind had swept her and her companion away and deposited them in the cave. Understandably, this did little to dispel the wonder surrounding her. She died in 1892, her origins still unknown. The book sites the source as being Colin Wilson, Enigmas and Mysteries, p.131. There is also an illustration with the caption "The story of the green children found in Spain is remarkably similiar to that of two green children- a boy and a girl- who emerged from a cave in Woolpit, England, in the 11th century; the girl said they came from a sunless land." But I haven't found any entry in the book that talks about this other appearance. The whole thing sounds weird, but then again, that's what the book is about. Hope maybe this helped. -Steve