April 24, 2020 • 32 mins
In 2017 we talked about two children, green in color, who appeared in Suffolk, England in the 12th century,. The green children were written about in the 12th and 13th centuries as fact, but some people today classify as this tale as folklore.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, listeners. This episode is part of our new playlist
to help everybody get through these times we're living in.
It's our host faves playlist. Yeah, these are just some
of our personal favorites, ones that we had a particular
affinity for, and because these are stressful and trying times,
we tried to stick to the ones that weren't quite
(00:22):
as dour. So hopefully they'll give you a little lift,
Stay safe. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
(00:44):
Still in our favorite month of the year, October, Yes,
Halloween season, and so we have an episode that I
know a lot of people have requested that The only
person I wrote down was Betty, So thank you Betty
and everyone that I forget ought to write down in
addition to Betty. It is a topic that was written
about in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a factual
(01:07):
thing that really happened, but some people today classify it
more as folklore. And it is the green children of
Woolpit who made a really eerie appearance in Suffolk, England
and the twelfth century, we accidentally have a little theme
of like odd happenings in England at the beginning of
this we're kicking off with weird English stuff, apparently, and
(01:31):
by today's standards. The village of Woolpit is quite small,
with a population of only about two thousand people traveling
by car. It's a couple of hours northeast of London.
That's about thirty six miles or fifty eight kilometers east
of Cambridge. And in the twelfth century the area was
not exactly bustling, but it was more densely populated than
much of rural England, and it was a thriving agricultural center. So,
(01:55):
according to the story, one day in Woolpit, two children,
a boy and a girl, emerged from a series of
pits that were used for trapping wolves. These these wolf pits,
and not the fabric of wool are where wolf Pit
gets its name is named after wolf pits. There are
two chronicles of this event and what happened after these
(02:17):
two children appeared. What is by Ralph Abbot of Cogschal,
who wrote his explanation of what happened as part of
the Chronicon anglican Um, and the other is by William
of Newburgh and the Historia Rerum Anglicarum, or the History
of English Affairs, and both men wrote these accounts in Latin.
(02:38):
A translation of William's version by Joseph Stevenson is part
of a truly colossal set of volumes called The Church
Historians of England, which was published in eighteen fifty three
and is available online archive dot org if you want
to check it out. Stevenson translated Ralph's version two, but
we couldn't find that part of the Chronicon anglican Um
in English online, so instead of subjecting everyone to Ralph's Latin,
(03:02):
shoved through Google Translate, which is a hilarious activity if
you ever want to want to get some comedy in
your life. We're going to read Stevenson's translation of William's version.
I did, indeed, of Ralph's Latin version through Google Translate,
and that was my amusement for a good chunk of afternoon.
Before we get to William's version of this story, though,
(03:24):
I want to have a brief digression about Joseph Stevenson
because he is a character. He was the son of
a surgeon, but he also helped his uncle out in
his job as a smuggler. In his youth, he was
not particularly a good student either. While he was enrolled
at a grammar school that was attached to Durham Cathedral,
for some reason, he was keeping a loaded pistol among
(03:45):
his possessions, which went off while being handled by a servant,
and according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, that
that had quote dramatic, although not grave consequences. I feel
like a t set must have been destroyed, and other
things as well. It gave no detail, but it makes
(04:06):
it sound like fortunately no one was harmed in this
accidental discharge of a firearm, but there was some dramatic incident.
And in spite of this checkered background, Stevenson wound up
working at the British Museum. He married and he had
two children, and then he changed courses to join the
clergy after he was traumatized by the death of his brother.
(04:27):
He became a priest after the death of his wife.
So where we come around to these monumental volumes of
translated works of history. He turned out to really have
a knack for translating and editing historical documents. He did
a lot of work for the historical Manuscript's commission. He
put together a bunch of different gigantic collections of historical
documents for various different clubs and historical societies. These ranged
(04:51):
from four to eight volumes in length. Some of them
were these gargantain editions of old religious and secular histories.
And this was just his thing. Apparently he was also
extremely personable and generous as well. So this is the
guy that did the translation of the thing that we're
about to read. Yeah. Worthy of a little mini biography
there for sure. Uh And back to the story. In
(05:14):
Stevenson's translation, William begins his account by saying that it
doesn't seem right to skip over the story of the
Green Children, But at the same time he had some
doubts about the matter. It seemed both ridiculous and mysterious.
But at the same time he had heard about it
from so many people, all of them very respectable and competent,
(05:35):
that he was quote compelled to believe. I feel like
this is a twelfth century version of the X Files poster.
I know, well, it's also a great that couching that
happens for spooky stories, and like I know this is ridiculous,
but there are enough reasonable people to believe it that
there must be truth in it. Yes, So we are
(05:56):
going to read his whole account because I love it
and I want to share it with all of you.
And it's a bit long. So we are going to
take turns. As we recently did when we talked about
the Devil's hoof prints. We took turns on a rather
lengthy passage. That's what we're gonna do again today. So
he he got into the story, saying, in East Anglia,
there is a village distant, as it is said four
(06:18):
or five miles from the noble monastery of the Blessed
King and Martyr Edmund. Near this place are seen some
very ancient cavities called wolf pits that in English pits
for wolves, and which give their name to the adjacent village.
During harvest, while the reapers were employed in gathering the
produce of the fields, two children, a boy and a girl,
(06:41):
completely green in their persons and clad in garments of
a strange color and unknown materials, emerged from these excavations.
While wandering through the fields in astonishment. They were seized
by the reapers and conducted to the village and many
persons coming to see so novel ast sight. They were
kept some days without food. But when they were nearly
(07:05):
exhausted with hunger, and yet could relish no species of
support which was offered to them, it happened that some
beans were brought in from the field, which they immediately
seized with avidity, and examined the stock for the pulse,
but not finding it in the hollow of the stock,
they wept bitterly upon this. One of the by standards,
(07:26):
taking the beans from the pods, offered them to the children,
who seized them directly and ate them with pleasure. This
next sentence is my favorite sentence, and the entire thing
by this food they were supported for many months until
they learned the use of bread at length by degrees,
(07:46):
they changed their original color through the natural effect of
our food, and became like ourselves, and also learned our language.
It seemed fitting to certain discreet persons that they should
receive the sacrament of baptism, would was administered accordingly. The boy,
who appeared to be the younger, surviving his baptism but
a little time, died prematurely. His sister, however, continued in
(08:11):
good health and differed not in the least from the
women of our own country. Afterwards, as it is reported,
she was married at Lynne and was living a few
years since, at least so they say. Moreover, after they
had acquired our language. On being asked who and whence
they were, they are said to have replied, we are
(08:31):
inhabitants of the land of St. Martin, who was regarded
with peculiar veneration, in the country which gave us birth.
Being further asked where that land was and how they came,
thence hither they answered, we are ignorant of both these circumstances,
and we only remember this that on a certain day,
when we were feeding our father's flocks in the fields,
(08:52):
we heard a great sound, such as we are now
accustomed to hear at St. Edmund's when the bells are charming.
And whilst listening to the sound and admiration, we became,
on a sudden, as it were, entranced, and found ourselves
among you in the fields where you were reaping. Being
questioned whether in that land they believed in Christ or
(09:14):
whether the sun arose, they replied that the country was
Christian and possessed churches, but said they quote the sun
does not rise upon our countrymen. Our land is little
cheered by its beams. We are contented with that twilight, which,
among you precedes the sunrise or follows the sunset. Moreover,
(09:34):
a certain luminous country is seeing not far distant from ours,
and divided from it by a very considerable river. These
and many other matters too numerous to particularize. They are
said to have recounted to curious inquirers. Let everyone say
as he pleases, and reason on such matters according to
his abilities. I feel no regret at having recorded an
(09:57):
event so prodigious and miraculous. So that's the story, I know.
Obviously they were asked a whole lot of other questions,
but it tickles me that the ones that he was
compelled to write down here were do you believe in Christ?
And also does the sun exist there? Uh? Yeah, maybe
they thought they were from another planet or the realm.
That's gonna come up. Yeah, Obviously, we're going to take
(10:22):
a quick break before we get into some of the
historical elements that relate to this story. Overall, Williams and
Ralph's versions of what happened with these Green children are
(10:43):
consistent with each other, although Williams is a little bit
longer and it has a few more details. Both agree
that the children were taken to the home of Lord
Richard de Cown, who lived in Wikes, which is about
six miles to the north of a little pit. Williams
mentioned of this isn't a footnote, which we didn't read,
which is why it probably does not ring a bell.
They both talk about the children having green skin and
(11:05):
only eating beans, and eventually assimilating with the rest of
the community, with the brother dying sometime after being baptized,
and unlike in the version we read, though, Ralph makes
it sound as though only the sister lived long enough
to tell their story. He doesn't mention a particular name
for where they came from, and there's no certain luminous
country that they could see from their home. There's also
(11:27):
a slight difference in the two accounts concerning how the
children claimed that they came to be in Wolpit. We
read in William's version that they had been tending the
flocks before hearing a loud noise, quotes such as we
are now accustomed to hear at St. Edmund's when the
bells are chiming but they didn't otherwise know how they
had wound up in Wolpit. Ralph, on the other hand,
said the children reported that they had become disoriented while
(11:49):
tending cattle, and they got lost, and then they followed
the sound of chiming bells through a long series of
underground passages before emerging emerging from a cave near Wilpit.
So bells are involved in both of them in a
slightly different way. One is sort of like they're hoping
to get home theoretically right, and the other is just
(12:10):
that they the bells put them in some odd mental state,
that they went into a fugue state and traveled to Wilpit. Yes, Okay.
The two accounts do diverge in what happened to the
surviving sister of the pair as well. So we read
in William's account that she married a man living in Lynn,
but Ralph says that she became a servant in Lord
Richard de Cown's house and lived there for many years,
(12:33):
not necessarily happily, though he calls her quote very wanton
and impudent. Regardless, William indicates that she was still living
when he wrote his chronicle down and there's been some
discussion about exactly when in the twelfth century this event
might have happened. William of Newburgh lived from roughly eleven
thirty six to eleven His version was probably written down
(12:57):
towards the end of his life. Ralph's version made it
into print after William's death sometime around twelve twenty, so
a lot of times we would think, okay, the later
account is probably not quite as accurate. But even though
Ralph's version was written down later, he actually lived a
lot closer to Woolpit than William did. He said he
had learned the story directly from Lord Richard to count
(13:19):
himself um, whereas William was hearing it all at least
second hand. And William notes that it was at harvest
time during the reign of King Stephen, which was from
eleven thirty five to eleven fifty four. Ralph, on the
other hand, says that it took place during the reign
of his successor, Henry the Second, which was from eleven
(13:39):
fifty four to eleven eighty nine. Author and archaeologist Brian
Haughton points out that there's no mention of the children
in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which documents English history up
until Stephen's death, and includes a number of other odd
and wondrous stories. It's certainly possible that the Green Children
aren't in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle because it's authors didn't
(14:00):
know about it or just didn't think it needed to
be included. But if it's not included because it hadn't
happened yet, that would put the time frame into Henry
the Second's reign rather than Stevens. And regarding William's notation
of it being harvest time, the beans that they were
eating would have been broad beans, which are more commonly
known as fava beans in the United States. Those were
(14:21):
picked around July in August, so that's the approximate time
of year, and there is a lot to suggest that
something really did happen. The two accounts seem to have
been written completely independently of one another, and although William
does a bit of protesting about how he knows that
this story sounds unbelievable, both men wrote as though they
(14:41):
were documenting a real event that actually happened. At the
same time, when both men were writing purportedly mystical, supernatural
and miraculous events were a lot more likely to be
accepted at face value than they might be today. It
was pretty much normal to write down something as odd
as two green children crawling out of a wolf pit
and just accepting the idea that something supernatural was at
(15:04):
work without really having to examine it further. The story
of the Green Children of Wolpit definitely stuck around into
the thirteenth century, and from there it became a little
more obscure outside the immediate area until the late fifteen hundreds,
when the first printed edition of Williams Historia Rim and
Lacaram came out. A new edition that came out in
(15:26):
sixteen ten also included Ralph's version to the story as
a compliment to Williams. With that, it started making more
appearances in written works by other authors, who sometimes got
understandably confused about which version was Ralph's and which which
version was Williams. I, in fact, got few confused about
that repeatedly when working on this podcast. It's easy to
(15:48):
do retellings of the story from the fifteenth century and beyond. Also,
we're not usually quite as credulous as Ralph and William
had been. William Camden, writing in his work Britain Yax
is one example, here's his description, and I wish I
could share all of the delightful spelling in his description
with everyone. It's pretty great. It's pretty awesome, wolp. It
(16:11):
is a market town which meant merchant and soundeth as
much as the wolves pit. And if we may believe Newbrigensis,
who had told as pretty and formal a tale of
the place as is that fable called the True Narration
of Lucian, namely how two little boys forsuit of green
color hand of sadder's kind, after they had made a
(16:34):
long journey by passages underground, from out of another world,
from the antipoties in St. Martin's Land, came up here
of whom you would know more repair to the author himself,
where you will find such a matter as will make
you laugh, your phil if you have a laughing spleen.
I feel like I definitely have a laughing spleen. I
(16:56):
think so yet that we have um made that prognosis.
It's official. I will call my family doctor uh Newbergensis
was a name for William of Newburgh. The quote True
Narration of Lucian is a second century satire by Lucian
of sam Asada which details a trip to the Moon
that would rival our great Moon Hoax episode. There's a
(17:18):
whole bit about men with dogs heads that fight from
winged acorns, and flees as big as twelve elephants. Oh,
that's terrifying, and warriors armed with radishes flung from slings.
I love all of this. This work is obviously not
meant to be taken as fact, and Camden obviously does
not take the Green Children seriously at all. From there,
(17:41):
the story of the Green Children started to influence other
more fanciful works. Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moon
or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither, which he called
a quote essay of fancy, talks about a novel disciplinary
method employed by parents on the Moon where they would
send their unruly children down to Earth and brings them
(18:03):
earthly children back in their place. And in this whole
story he made reference to quote certain stories he had
heard confirming this idea it was true, and those certain
stories were Williams Historia Realm and Lacaram. I want to
know what happened to the earthly kids that lived on
the moon. Did they eventually get fed beans and turned green?
(18:27):
There's so many questions He might say I didn't read
the whole thing. The Green Children have continued to make
appearances in fiction into the twentieth century and beyond. Herbert
Reid's novel The Green Child came out in nineteen thirty four.
The Green Children of Bangos, set in Spain in eighty seven,
was part of John Macklin's five book Strange Destinies. The
(18:50):
Spanish setting is echoed in the nine ten thousand Maniacs
on Green Children, which starts in August day in the
Hills of Spain, a pair of children merged from a cave.
And of course there are lots of other stories and
books and TV episodes and the like that all draw
from this as well. And it's not totally clear whether
the Green Children are the inspiration for the basic idea
(19:13):
of Martians as little green men, but they were definitely
described as green, and people were also speculating that maybe
they were aliens. Earlier as the sixteenth century, and outside
of the world of fiction, the Green Children also started
being written about as folklore in the nineteenth century. In
eighteen fifty, Thomas Kitely included bits of both Williams and
(19:34):
Ralph's accounts in his work Fairy Mythology. This was the
first time the story was available to people who did
not read Latin, and since it was in a book
by a folklorist called Fairy Mythology, a lot of people
from this point assumed that story was inherently folkloric. Sometimes
they're specifically fairies, such as in Catherine Briggs Dictionary of Fairies,
(19:55):
which came out in nineteen seventy six, and there are
also people who interpret them as forest spirits or personifications
of nature. I feel like the whole like fairy myth
right up through. Tinkerbell was very informed by all of this.
About the same time as Kitelie was documenting the story
as folklore, the Green Children were also becoming more widely
(20:17):
known to the general public. In eighteen seventy five, a
guide book to East Anglia reference to the Green Children
and then other mentions and other travel guides followed, as
you know, interesting points of interests and interesting tidbits about
the place that you're visiting. A sign at will Pit
honoring the story. It was erected in nineteen seventy seven
is part of Queen Elizabeth Silver Jubilee, and today the
(20:39):
story is like they're on the village of Wilpit's web page.
And of course there are also a lot of rational
or not so rational explanations for what was really going
on here, and we're going to dive into those possibilities
after we first paused for a little sponsor break. So unsurprisingly,
(21:08):
there are lots of hypotheses about who the Green Children
were and where they came from. One connects them to
the Babes in the Wood, which was first written down
as a ballad in and The basic story of the
Babes in the Wood is that a very greedy uncle
was guardian to two young children and he was hoping
to steal their fortunes, so he hired some men to
(21:28):
take them into the woods and murder them. As so
often happens in these kinds of stories, the men he
hired didn't have the heart to do it and abandoned
them instead, so in the story, they eventually starved. This
folk tale is typically set in Wayland Wood, which is
about thirty miles or forty eight kilometers away from Woolpit,
so people suggesting that the Green Children were really the
(21:50):
Babes in the Wood just moved the location closer by.
And also, about four hundred years earlier than the ballads
first written appearance. That definitely doesn't mean ballad didn't exist earlier,
but like four years of a long time for a
ballad to go without being written down, or story to
go without being written down, at least by this point
(22:10):
in history. So compounding the kind of far fetchedness of
this explanation is they go to rationale for why they
were green, which is chlorosis, otherwise known as green sickness. Now,
while there are rare forms of anemia that can cause
a person to have a kind of greenish pallor, along
(22:31):
with the idea that people who are really nauseated are
described as looking green, sometimes green sickness is not that.
Green sickness was described in medical literature from the sixteenth
to late nineteenth century. It was diagnosed almost exclusively in
young women, and it was also called the virgin's disease.
(22:51):
The symptoms included things like restlessness, irritability, fatigue, too little appetite,
too much appetite, indigestion, ache, and an absence of menstrual periods.
Treatments included blood letting, marriage always on a prescription pad,
and medicines to bring on menstrual flow. To be clear,
(23:14):
marriage really meant sex in this case. And there are
some extremely suggestive ballads dating back to the sixteenth and
seventeen centuries about treatments, and we're using the air quotes
there for green sickness. There's actually a Sawbones episode about
green sickness if you want to hear a whole lot
more about this. It also does not really take a
lot of Google efforts to find these extremely suggestive ballots
(23:38):
ballads about how to treat green sickness. So obviously they
probably didn't have green sickness because that's not a real thing,
right uh. And also those in in this sort of
combination story of the green children in the Babes in
the Wood, the folks who don't suggest that maybe they
had clurosis often suggest that maybe the hired men did
(23:59):
act tried to kill them using arsenic, that they had
survived with the arsenic had turned their skin green. This
is a weird conflation of sort of two different historical things.
While arsenic has definitely been used to make green dies,
it was typically exposure to those dies that made a
person's skin turn green, not surviving an attempt to be
(24:22):
poisoned with it. Right, Arsenic in itself does not carry
that pigment right to a person's person. I guess if
you tried to murder someone with green die, which you
could have done, you could have done, then you might
have green skin. You'll be so fashionable and deceased. Yeah,
that would be a weird way to murder people. I
(24:42):
will make a great story for any of our writers
out there. You just take that one. Uh. The idea
that the Green children might have been aliens, which I love,
goes all the way back to William Camden, who suggested
that they were either satyrs meaning wild men, or Antipodeans
meaning aliens. Robert Burton also made a passing reference to
(25:03):
the idea that they may have come from another planet
in Anatomy of Melancholy, which was published in sixteen twenty one.
So the aliens hypothesis has been around for a really
long time and it has persisted to the present. In
article in Analog, which is a science fiction magazine, Duncan
Lunin asserted that they were from a human colony on
(25:25):
an alien planet, sent here through a malfunctioning transporter. And
this explanation also involves the Knights Templar in some way.
This is one of the few things I didn't actually
get to read for myself all the way through, some
relying on someone else's synopsis of it. But uh. Interestingly,
in a much more down to earth portion of this article,
he also pieced together a family treat for Richard to
(25:48):
count and claims that the surviving sister was baptized as
Agnes and that the man she married was a royal
official named Richard Barr. So that's a fascinating pass lead,
totally legit historical fact in the context of this overall
aliens article with the Knights Templar involved. I wonder if
(26:08):
that means that someone could trace their alien heritage all
the way back to Agnes, and you could know that
you are part from another planet, which you really all are,
because we're all made to start us to some degree,
true story, we're all aliens. The most complete practical explanation
for what might have happened came from Paul Harris in
(26:28):
and that was published in forty in Studies, which is
an offshoot of forty Times. I actually used a lot
of writing from one of the editors there for our
Devil's Footprints episode. Uh. And that's a magazine that's devoted
to strange phenomena, and he suggests that all of this
really happened in eleven seventy three in the reign of
Henry the Second. In brief, Harris suggests that these were
(26:51):
the children of Flemish immigrants and that their parents were
killed at the Battle of Formum in eleven seventy three.
The St Martin's land that the sister referred to was
Fornhum St Martin, roughly ten miles or sixteen kilometers from Wolpits.
They're not that far away and also not far from
the River Lark, so there would have been a river nearby.
(27:12):
According to this theory, they escaped the battle and then
the two children fled into Thetford forest and took refuge
in flint mines there before following the bells from Verry
St Edmund's to find their way out and make their
way to Woolpit. So their unknown tongue and clothing were
just Flemish and their skin was greenish due to malnutrition
(27:33):
due to this extended time of being abandoned and wandering
in flint mines. That all holds up. Uh, It all
sounds like it fits so very well, But of course
there are a few problems. One, the Flemish people killed
at Fornham were mercenaries hired to fight with English rebels
against Henry the Seconds Forces. Mercenaries generally as a rule,
(27:55):
did not bring their children with them into battle. Uh. Two,
it seems unlikely that no one around Wolpit spoke Flemish
or some other version of Dutch, at least enough to
spot it as a known language rather than some unrecognizable tongue. Three,
the river Lark isn't really that big, and even to
a child's eye, it's probably not quote a very considerable river,
(28:18):
So that descriptor does not really hold up. And for
this formum to Setford to Bury St. Edmunds to Woolpit
trek really goes way out of the way. It's actually
a total of about thirty miles or fifty two kilometers,
the first leg of it going in nearly the direct
opposite direction from Wolpit. Setford is also way too far
away from Barry St. Edmund's to hear the bells from there.
(28:41):
Also want a lot more just immediate non synchronization in
the descriptions that battle happened in October. So unless those
two kids wandered for months and months and months before
arriving in woolpit, like there would not have been any
fresh beans harvest because you'll remember that was what June July.
(29:04):
I think July August was when they are generally harvested.
That's nine including winter with two tiny children. Yeah, so malnourished,
tiny children. It's a mystery. Maybe they made the devil's footprints. Maybe,
so sickle side trip play a little prank. Time traveled
(29:27):
seven years maybe or some other number of years, depending
which account you ready, So pretty much all of the
historical um accounts and then also a lot of the
his like farther back in the past works of fiction
that we talked about today are all on the internet
for free, and they will all be linked from our
show notes to this episode. If you just really want
(29:50):
to go read either a colossally long history of the
Church in England as translated UH in the nineteenth century,
or if you just want to read some weird science
fictionesque stories about the moon written in the distant past,
Like that's all there. Who doesn't want to read those?
I kind of do. The whole thing about the flying
(30:11):
acorns and the dog faced people and the the specifically
multiple number of elephants, that the fleas were as big
as it's all. But people are pretty much on their
own if they want to go looking for the dirty ballads.
Is that where we decided the dirty ballads are not
linked into one of them is definitely not safe for work. Um.
(30:33):
But so, as I was trying to put together some
thoughts about green sickness, I found a larger than I
would expect number of just very incredulous papers published in
journals that were like, do you think green sickness could
have been caused by malnutrition? No? I think green sickness
probably was caused by misogyny. But but one of them
(30:57):
like this, it started out seeming like they were genuinely
asking whether there was some kind of organic mechanism at work.
And then the conclusion was like no, really, like people
just got really into Hippocrates and started making these Hippocratic diagnoses,
and that's why it suddenly enters this historical record at
(31:19):
this time and leaves and this time. But it was
through that one article that I found this particularly risk
a ballad, which you know, if you're an adult person
with kind of a skewed sense of humor, it is
always funny to me and a little in a little
bit of a silly and almost borderline charming way to
read sort of dirty writing. And I'm again I'm using
(31:42):
the air quotes from really olden times because their choice
of words is just very funny to today's years, and
that's what makes it hilarious. Yeah. So, I don't know.
If you try to search for this yourself and you
come up with with no responses, just send us an
email history podcast that how stuff works, that calm. I
will tell you where to find it. Tracy is going
(32:02):
to peddle the dirty paddles. Thank you so much for
joining us today for this classic. If you have heard
any kind of email address or maybe a Facebook you
are l during the course of the episode, that might
be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because we have
changed our email address again. You can now reach us
(32:25):
at History podcast at I heart radio dot com and
we're all over social media at missed in History and
you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,
the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen
to podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, from I
(32:47):
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, listeners. This episode is part of our new playlist
to help everybody get through these times we're living in.
It's our host faves playlist. Yeah, these are just some
of our personal favorites, ones that we had a particular
affinity for, and because these are stressful and trying times,
we tried to stick to the ones that weren't quite
(00:22):
as dour. So hopefully they'll give you a little lift,
Stay safe. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
(00:44):
Still in our favorite month of the year, October, Yes,
Halloween season, and so we have an episode that I
know a lot of people have requested that The only
person I wrote down was Betty, So thank you Betty
and everyone that I forget ought to write down in
addition to Betty. It is a topic that was written
about in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a factual
(01:07):
thing that really happened, but some people today classify it
more as folklore. And it is the green children of
Woolpit who made a really eerie appearance in Suffolk, England
and the twelfth century, we accidentally have a little theme
of like odd happenings in England at the beginning of
this we're kicking off with weird English stuff, apparently, and
(01:31):
by today's standards. The village of Woolpit is quite small,
with a population of only about two thousand people traveling
by car. It's a couple of hours northeast of London.
That's about thirty six miles or fifty eight kilometers east
of Cambridge. And in the twelfth century the area was
not exactly bustling, but it was more densely populated than
much of rural England, and it was a thriving agricultural center. So,
(01:55):
according to the story, one day in Woolpit, two children,
a boy and a girl, emerged from a series of
pits that were used for trapping wolves. These these wolf pits,
and not the fabric of wool are where wolf Pit
gets its name is named after wolf pits. There are
two chronicles of this event and what happened after these
(02:17):
two children appeared. What is by Ralph Abbot of Cogschal,
who wrote his explanation of what happened as part of
the Chronicon anglican Um, and the other is by William
of Newburgh and the Historia Rerum Anglicarum, or the History
of English Affairs, and both men wrote these accounts in Latin.
(02:38):
A translation of William's version by Joseph Stevenson is part
of a truly colossal set of volumes called The Church
Historians of England, which was published in eighteen fifty three
and is available online archive dot org if you want
to check it out. Stevenson translated Ralph's version two, but
we couldn't find that part of the Chronicon anglican Um
in English online, so instead of subjecting everyone to Ralph's Latin,
(03:02):
shoved through Google Translate, which is a hilarious activity if
you ever want to want to get some comedy in
your life. We're going to read Stevenson's translation of William's version.
I did, indeed, of Ralph's Latin version through Google Translate,
and that was my amusement for a good chunk of afternoon.
Before we get to William's version of this story, though,
(03:24):
I want to have a brief digression about Joseph Stevenson
because he is a character. He was the son of
a surgeon, but he also helped his uncle out in
his job as a smuggler. In his youth, he was
not particularly a good student either. While he was enrolled
at a grammar school that was attached to Durham Cathedral,
for some reason, he was keeping a loaded pistol among
(03:45):
his possessions, which went off while being handled by a servant,
and according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, that
that had quote dramatic, although not grave consequences. I feel
like a t set must have been destroyed, and other
things as well. It gave no detail, but it makes
(04:06):
it sound like fortunately no one was harmed in this
accidental discharge of a firearm, but there was some dramatic incident.
And in spite of this checkered background, Stevenson wound up
working at the British Museum. He married and he had
two children, and then he changed courses to join the
clergy after he was traumatized by the death of his brother.
(04:27):
He became a priest after the death of his wife.
So where we come around to these monumental volumes of
translated works of history. He turned out to really have
a knack for translating and editing historical documents. He did
a lot of work for the historical Manuscript's commission. He
put together a bunch of different gigantic collections of historical
documents for various different clubs and historical societies. These ranged
(04:51):
from four to eight volumes in length. Some of them
were these gargantain editions of old religious and secular histories.
And this was just his thing. Apparently he was also
extremely personable and generous as well. So this is the
guy that did the translation of the thing that we're
about to read. Yeah. Worthy of a little mini biography
there for sure. Uh And back to the story. In
(05:14):
Stevenson's translation, William begins his account by saying that it
doesn't seem right to skip over the story of the
Green Children, But at the same time he had some
doubts about the matter. It seemed both ridiculous and mysterious.
But at the same time he had heard about it
from so many people, all of them very respectable and competent,
(05:35):
that he was quote compelled to believe. I feel like
this is a twelfth century version of the X Files poster.
I know, well, it's also a great that couching that
happens for spooky stories, and like I know this is ridiculous,
but there are enough reasonable people to believe it that
there must be truth in it. Yes, So we are
(05:56):
going to read his whole account because I love it
and I want to share it with all of you.
And it's a bit long. So we are going to
take turns. As we recently did when we talked about
the Devil's hoof prints. We took turns on a rather
lengthy passage. That's what we're gonna do again today. So
he he got into the story, saying, in East Anglia,
there is a village distant, as it is said four
(06:18):
or five miles from the noble monastery of the Blessed
King and Martyr Edmund. Near this place are seen some
very ancient cavities called wolf pits that in English pits
for wolves, and which give their name to the adjacent village.
During harvest, while the reapers were employed in gathering the
produce of the fields, two children, a boy and a girl,
(06:41):
completely green in their persons and clad in garments of
a strange color and unknown materials, emerged from these excavations.
While wandering through the fields in astonishment. They were seized
by the reapers and conducted to the village and many
persons coming to see so novel ast sight. They were
kept some days without food. But when they were nearly
(07:05):
exhausted with hunger, and yet could relish no species of
support which was offered to them, it happened that some
beans were brought in from the field, which they immediately
seized with avidity, and examined the stock for the pulse,
but not finding it in the hollow of the stock,
they wept bitterly upon this. One of the by standards,
(07:26):
taking the beans from the pods, offered them to the children,
who seized them directly and ate them with pleasure. This
next sentence is my favorite sentence, and the entire thing
by this food they were supported for many months until
they learned the use of bread at length by degrees,
(07:46):
they changed their original color through the natural effect of
our food, and became like ourselves, and also learned our language.
It seemed fitting to certain discreet persons that they should
receive the sacrament of baptism, would was administered accordingly. The boy,
who appeared to be the younger, surviving his baptism but
a little time, died prematurely. His sister, however, continued in
(08:11):
good health and differed not in the least from the
women of our own country. Afterwards, as it is reported,
she was married at Lynne and was living a few
years since, at least so they say. Moreover, after they
had acquired our language. On being asked who and whence
they were, they are said to have replied, we are
(08:31):
inhabitants of the land of St. Martin, who was regarded
with peculiar veneration, in the country which gave us birth.
Being further asked where that land was and how they came,
thence hither they answered, we are ignorant of both these circumstances,
and we only remember this that on a certain day,
when we were feeding our father's flocks in the fields,
(08:52):
we heard a great sound, such as we are now
accustomed to hear at St. Edmund's when the bells are charming.
And whilst listening to the sound and admiration, we became,
on a sudden, as it were, entranced, and found ourselves
among you in the fields where you were reaping. Being
questioned whether in that land they believed in Christ or
(09:14):
whether the sun arose, they replied that the country was
Christian and possessed churches, but said they quote the sun
does not rise upon our countrymen. Our land is little
cheered by its beams. We are contented with that twilight, which,
among you precedes the sunrise or follows the sunset. Moreover,
(09:34):
a certain luminous country is seeing not far distant from ours,
and divided from it by a very considerable river. These
and many other matters too numerous to particularize. They are
said to have recounted to curious inquirers. Let everyone say
as he pleases, and reason on such matters according to
his abilities. I feel no regret at having recorded an
(09:57):
event so prodigious and miraculous. So that's the story, I know.
Obviously they were asked a whole lot of other questions,
but it tickles me that the ones that he was
compelled to write down here were do you believe in Christ?
And also does the sun exist there? Uh? Yeah, maybe
they thought they were from another planet or the realm.
That's gonna come up. Yeah, Obviously, we're going to take
(10:22):
a quick break before we get into some of the
historical elements that relate to this story. Overall, Williams and
Ralph's versions of what happened with these Green children are
(10:43):
consistent with each other, although Williams is a little bit
longer and it has a few more details. Both agree
that the children were taken to the home of Lord
Richard de Cown, who lived in Wikes, which is about
six miles to the north of a little pit. Williams
mentioned of this isn't a footnote, which we didn't read,
which is why it probably does not ring a bell.
They both talk about the children having green skin and
(11:05):
only eating beans, and eventually assimilating with the rest of
the community, with the brother dying sometime after being baptized,
and unlike in the version we read, though, Ralph makes
it sound as though only the sister lived long enough
to tell their story. He doesn't mention a particular name
for where they came from, and there's no certain luminous
country that they could see from their home. There's also
(11:27):
a slight difference in the two accounts concerning how the
children claimed that they came to be in Wolpit. We
read in William's version that they had been tending the
flocks before hearing a loud noise, quotes such as we
are now accustomed to hear at St. Edmund's when the
bells are chiming but they didn't otherwise know how they
had wound up in Wolpit. Ralph, on the other hand,
said the children reported that they had become disoriented while
(11:49):
tending cattle, and they got lost, and then they followed
the sound of chiming bells through a long series of
underground passages before emerging emerging from a cave near Wilpit.
So bells are involved in both of them in a
slightly different way. One is sort of like they're hoping
to get home theoretically right, and the other is just
(12:10):
that they the bells put them in some odd mental state,
that they went into a fugue state and traveled to Wilpit. Yes, Okay.
The two accounts do diverge in what happened to the
surviving sister of the pair as well. So we read
in William's account that she married a man living in Lynn,
but Ralph says that she became a servant in Lord
Richard de Cown's house and lived there for many years,
(12:33):
not necessarily happily, though he calls her quote very wanton
and impudent. Regardless, William indicates that she was still living
when he wrote his chronicle down and there's been some
discussion about exactly when in the twelfth century this event
might have happened. William of Newburgh lived from roughly eleven
thirty six to eleven His version was probably written down
(12:57):
towards the end of his life. Ralph's version made it
into print after William's death sometime around twelve twenty, so
a lot of times we would think, okay, the later
account is probably not quite as accurate. But even though
Ralph's version was written down later, he actually lived a
lot closer to Woolpit than William did. He said he
had learned the story directly from Lord Richard to count
(13:19):
himself um, whereas William was hearing it all at least
second hand. And William notes that it was at harvest
time during the reign of King Stephen, which was from
eleven thirty five to eleven fifty four. Ralph, on the
other hand, says that it took place during the reign
of his successor, Henry the Second, which was from eleven
(13:39):
fifty four to eleven eighty nine. Author and archaeologist Brian
Haughton points out that there's no mention of the children
in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which documents English history up
until Stephen's death, and includes a number of other odd
and wondrous stories. It's certainly possible that the Green Children
aren't in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle because it's authors didn't
(14:00):
know about it or just didn't think it needed to
be included. But if it's not included because it hadn't
happened yet, that would put the time frame into Henry
the Second's reign rather than Stevens. And regarding William's notation
of it being harvest time, the beans that they were
eating would have been broad beans, which are more commonly
known as fava beans in the United States. Those were
(14:21):
picked around July in August, so that's the approximate time
of year, and there is a lot to suggest that
something really did happen. The two accounts seem to have
been written completely independently of one another, and although William
does a bit of protesting about how he knows that
this story sounds unbelievable, both men wrote as though they
(14:41):
were documenting a real event that actually happened. At the
same time, when both men were writing purportedly mystical, supernatural
and miraculous events were a lot more likely to be
accepted at face value than they might be today. It
was pretty much normal to write down something as odd
as two green children crawling out of a wolf pit
and just accepting the idea that something supernatural was at
(15:04):
work without really having to examine it further. The story
of the Green Children of Wolpit definitely stuck around into
the thirteenth century, and from there it became a little
more obscure outside the immediate area until the late fifteen hundreds,
when the first printed edition of Williams Historia Rim and
Lacaram came out. A new edition that came out in
(15:26):
sixteen ten also included Ralph's version to the story as
a compliment to Williams. With that, it started making more
appearances in written works by other authors, who sometimes got
understandably confused about which version was Ralph's and which which
version was Williams. I, in fact, got few confused about
that repeatedly when working on this podcast. It's easy to
(15:48):
do retellings of the story from the fifteenth century and beyond. Also,
we're not usually quite as credulous as Ralph and William
had been. William Camden, writing in his work Britain Yax
is one example, here's his description, and I wish I
could share all of the delightful spelling in his description
with everyone. It's pretty great. It's pretty awesome, wolp. It
(16:11):
is a market town which meant merchant and soundeth as
much as the wolves pit. And if we may believe Newbrigensis,
who had told as pretty and formal a tale of
the place as is that fable called the True Narration
of Lucian, namely how two little boys forsuit of green
color hand of sadder's kind, after they had made a
(16:34):
long journey by passages underground, from out of another world,
from the antipoties in St. Martin's Land, came up here
of whom you would know more repair to the author himself,
where you will find such a matter as will make
you laugh, your phil if you have a laughing spleen.
I feel like I definitely have a laughing spleen. I
(16:56):
think so yet that we have um made that prognosis.
It's official. I will call my family doctor uh Newbergensis
was a name for William of Newburgh. The quote True
Narration of Lucian is a second century satire by Lucian
of sam Asada which details a trip to the Moon
that would rival our great Moon Hoax episode. There's a
(17:18):
whole bit about men with dogs heads that fight from
winged acorns, and flees as big as twelve elephants. Oh,
that's terrifying, and warriors armed with radishes flung from slings.
I love all of this. This work is obviously not
meant to be taken as fact, and Camden obviously does
not take the Green Children seriously at all. From there,
(17:41):
the story of the Green Children started to influence other
more fanciful works. Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moon
or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither, which he called
a quote essay of fancy, talks about a novel disciplinary
method employed by parents on the Moon where they would
send their unruly children down to Earth and brings them
(18:03):
earthly children back in their place. And in this whole
story he made reference to quote certain stories he had
heard confirming this idea it was true, and those certain
stories were Williams Historia Realm and Lacaram. I want to
know what happened to the earthly kids that lived on
the moon. Did they eventually get fed beans and turned green?
(18:27):
There's so many questions He might say I didn't read
the whole thing. The Green Children have continued to make
appearances in fiction into the twentieth century and beyond. Herbert
Reid's novel The Green Child came out in nineteen thirty four.
The Green Children of Bangos, set in Spain in eighty seven,
was part of John Macklin's five book Strange Destinies. The
(18:50):
Spanish setting is echoed in the nine ten thousand Maniacs
on Green Children, which starts in August day in the
Hills of Spain, a pair of children merged from a cave.
And of course there are lots of other stories and
books and TV episodes and the like that all draw
from this as well. And it's not totally clear whether
the Green Children are the inspiration for the basic idea
(19:13):
of Martians as little green men, but they were definitely
described as green, and people were also speculating that maybe
they were aliens. Earlier as the sixteenth century, and outside
of the world of fiction, the Green Children also started
being written about as folklore in the nineteenth century. In
eighteen fifty, Thomas Kitely included bits of both Williams and
(19:34):
Ralph's accounts in his work Fairy Mythology. This was the
first time the story was available to people who did
not read Latin, and since it was in a book
by a folklorist called Fairy Mythology, a lot of people
from this point assumed that story was inherently folkloric. Sometimes
they're specifically fairies, such as in Catherine Briggs Dictionary of Fairies,
(19:55):
which came out in nineteen seventy six, and there are
also people who interpret them as forest spirits or personifications
of nature. I feel like the whole like fairy myth
right up through. Tinkerbell was very informed by all of this.
About the same time as Kitelie was documenting the story
as folklore, the Green Children were also becoming more widely
(20:17):
known to the general public. In eighteen seventy five, a
guide book to East Anglia reference to the Green Children
and then other mentions and other travel guides followed, as
you know, interesting points of interests and interesting tidbits about
the place that you're visiting. A sign at will Pit
honoring the story. It was erected in nineteen seventy seven
is part of Queen Elizabeth Silver Jubilee, and today the
(20:39):
story is like they're on the village of Wilpit's web page.
And of course there are also a lot of rational
or not so rational explanations for what was really going
on here, and we're going to dive into those possibilities
after we first paused for a little sponsor break. So unsurprisingly,
(21:08):
there are lots of hypotheses about who the Green Children
were and where they came from. One connects them to
the Babes in the Wood, which was first written down
as a ballad in and The basic story of the
Babes in the Wood is that a very greedy uncle
was guardian to two young children and he was hoping
to steal their fortunes, so he hired some men to
(21:28):
take them into the woods and murder them. As so
often happens in these kinds of stories, the men he
hired didn't have the heart to do it and abandoned
them instead, so in the story, they eventually starved. This
folk tale is typically set in Wayland Wood, which is
about thirty miles or forty eight kilometers away from Woolpit,
so people suggesting that the Green Children were really the
(21:50):
Babes in the Wood just moved the location closer by.
And also, about four hundred years earlier than the ballads
first written appearance. That definitely doesn't mean ballad didn't exist earlier,
but like four years of a long time for a
ballad to go without being written down, or story to
go without being written down, at least by this point
(22:10):
in history. So compounding the kind of far fetchedness of
this explanation is they go to rationale for why they
were green, which is chlorosis, otherwise known as green sickness. Now,
while there are rare forms of anemia that can cause
a person to have a kind of greenish pallor, along
(22:31):
with the idea that people who are really nauseated are
described as looking green, sometimes green sickness is not that.
Green sickness was described in medical literature from the sixteenth
to late nineteenth century. It was diagnosed almost exclusively in
young women, and it was also called the virgin's disease.
(22:51):
The symptoms included things like restlessness, irritability, fatigue, too little appetite,
too much appetite, indigestion, ache, and an absence of menstrual periods.
Treatments included blood letting, marriage always on a prescription pad,
and medicines to bring on menstrual flow. To be clear,
(23:14):
marriage really meant sex in this case. And there are
some extremely suggestive ballads dating back to the sixteenth and
seventeen centuries about treatments, and we're using the air quotes
there for green sickness. There's actually a Sawbones episode about
green sickness if you want to hear a whole lot
more about this. It also does not really take a
lot of Google efforts to find these extremely suggestive ballots
(23:38):
ballads about how to treat green sickness. So obviously they
probably didn't have green sickness because that's not a real thing,
right uh. And also those in in this sort of
combination story of the green children in the Babes in
the Wood, the folks who don't suggest that maybe they
had clurosis often suggest that maybe the hired men did
(23:59):
act tried to kill them using arsenic, that they had
survived with the arsenic had turned their skin green. This
is a weird conflation of sort of two different historical things.
While arsenic has definitely been used to make green dies,
it was typically exposure to those dies that made a
person's skin turn green, not surviving an attempt to be
(24:22):
poisoned with it. Right, Arsenic in itself does not carry
that pigment right to a person's person. I guess if
you tried to murder someone with green die, which you
could have done, you could have done, then you might
have green skin. You'll be so fashionable and deceased. Yeah,
that would be a weird way to murder people. I
(24:42):
will make a great story for any of our writers
out there. You just take that one. Uh. The idea
that the Green children might have been aliens, which I love,
goes all the way back to William Camden, who suggested
that they were either satyrs meaning wild men, or Antipodeans
meaning aliens. Robert Burton also made a passing reference to
(25:03):
the idea that they may have come from another planet
in Anatomy of Melancholy, which was published in sixteen twenty one.
So the aliens hypothesis has been around for a really
long time and it has persisted to the present. In
article in Analog, which is a science fiction magazine, Duncan
Lunin asserted that they were from a human colony on
(25:25):
an alien planet, sent here through a malfunctioning transporter. And
this explanation also involves the Knights Templar in some way.
This is one of the few things I didn't actually
get to read for myself all the way through, some
relying on someone else's synopsis of it. But uh. Interestingly,
in a much more down to earth portion of this article,
he also pieced together a family treat for Richard to
(25:48):
count and claims that the surviving sister was baptized as
Agnes and that the man she married was a royal
official named Richard Barr. So that's a fascinating pass lead,
totally legit historical fact in the context of this overall
aliens article with the Knights Templar involved. I wonder if
(26:08):
that means that someone could trace their alien heritage all
the way back to Agnes, and you could know that
you are part from another planet, which you really all are,
because we're all made to start us to some degree,
true story, we're all aliens. The most complete practical explanation
for what might have happened came from Paul Harris in
(26:28):
and that was published in forty in Studies, which is
an offshoot of forty Times. I actually used a lot
of writing from one of the editors there for our
Devil's Footprints episode. Uh. And that's a magazine that's devoted
to strange phenomena, and he suggests that all of this
really happened in eleven seventy three in the reign of
Henry the Second. In brief, Harris suggests that these were
(26:51):
the children of Flemish immigrants and that their parents were
killed at the Battle of Formum in eleven seventy three.
The St Martin's land that the sister referred to was
Fornhum St Martin, roughly ten miles or sixteen kilometers from Wolpits.
They're not that far away and also not far from
the River Lark, so there would have been a river nearby.
(27:12):
According to this theory, they escaped the battle and then
the two children fled into Thetford forest and took refuge
in flint mines there before following the bells from Verry
St Edmund's to find their way out and make their
way to Woolpit. So their unknown tongue and clothing were
just Flemish and their skin was greenish due to malnutrition
(27:33):
due to this extended time of being abandoned and wandering
in flint mines. That all holds up. Uh, It all
sounds like it fits so very well, But of course
there are a few problems. One, the Flemish people killed
at Fornham were mercenaries hired to fight with English rebels
against Henry the Seconds Forces. Mercenaries generally as a rule,
(27:55):
did not bring their children with them into battle. Uh. Two,
it seems unlikely that no one around Wolpit spoke Flemish
or some other version of Dutch, at least enough to
spot it as a known language rather than some unrecognizable tongue. Three,
the river Lark isn't really that big, and even to
a child's eye, it's probably not quote a very considerable river,
(28:18):
So that descriptor does not really hold up. And for
this formum to Setford to Bury St. Edmunds to Woolpit
trek really goes way out of the way. It's actually
a total of about thirty miles or fifty two kilometers,
the first leg of it going in nearly the direct
opposite direction from Wolpit. Setford is also way too far
away from Barry St. Edmund's to hear the bells from there.
(28:41):
Also want a lot more just immediate non synchronization in
the descriptions that battle happened in October. So unless those
two kids wandered for months and months and months before
arriving in woolpit, like there would not have been any
fresh beans harvest because you'll remember that was what June July.
(29:04):
I think July August was when they are generally harvested.
That's nine including winter with two tiny children. Yeah, so malnourished,
tiny children. It's a mystery. Maybe they made the devil's footprints. Maybe,
so sickle side trip play a little prank. Time traveled
(29:27):
seven years maybe or some other number of years, depending
which account you ready, So pretty much all of the
historical um accounts and then also a lot of the
his like farther back in the past works of fiction
that we talked about today are all on the internet
for free, and they will all be linked from our
show notes to this episode. If you just really want
(29:50):
to go read either a colossally long history of the
Church in England as translated UH in the nineteenth century,
or if you just want to read some weird science
fictionesque stories about the moon written in the distant past,
Like that's all there. Who doesn't want to read those?
I kind of do. The whole thing about the flying
(30:11):
acorns and the dog faced people and the the specifically
multiple number of elephants, that the fleas were as big
as it's all. But people are pretty much on their
own if they want to go looking for the dirty ballads.
Is that where we decided the dirty ballads are not
linked into one of them is definitely not safe for work. Um.
(30:33):
But so, as I was trying to put together some
thoughts about green sickness, I found a larger than I
would expect number of just very incredulous papers published in
journals that were like, do you think green sickness could
have been caused by malnutrition? No? I think green sickness
probably was caused by misogyny. But but one of them
(30:57):
like this, it started out seeming like they were genuinely
asking whether there was some kind of organic mechanism at work.
And then the conclusion was like no, really, like people
just got really into Hippocrates and started making these Hippocratic diagnoses,
and that's why it suddenly enters this historical record at
(31:19):
this time and leaves and this time. But it was
through that one article that I found this particularly risk
a ballad, which you know, if you're an adult person
with kind of a skewed sense of humor, it is
always funny to me and a little in a little
bit of a silly and almost borderline charming way to
read sort of dirty writing. And I'm again I'm using
(31:42):
the air quotes from really olden times because their choice
of words is just very funny to today's years, and
that's what makes it hilarious. Yeah. So, I don't know.
If you try to search for this yourself and you
come up with with no responses, just send us an
email history podcast that how stuff works, that calm. I
will tell you where to find it. Tracy is going
(32:02):
to peddle the dirty paddles. Thank you so much for
joining us today for this classic. If you have heard
any kind of email address or maybe a Facebook you
are l during the course of the episode, that might
be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because we have
changed our email address again. You can now reach us
(32:25):
at History podcast at I heart radio dot com and
we're all over social media at missed in History and
you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,
the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen
to podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, from I
(32:47):
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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