Settling back against the big pillows on my bed, I opened Cockrill’s book and started with the Preface.
The legend of the Green Maiden of Suffolk is thought to have emerged in the mid-eleventh century, which, if true, means it predates the better-known legend of the Green Children of Woolpit, recorded in the Cronicon Anglicanum by Ralph of Coggeshall, English Chronicler and sixth abbot of Coggeshall Abbey.
Oh, joy—a pedant on his hobby horse. This could take all night.
Folklorists claim both tales originated with the ancient myth of the Green Man, a personification of Nature and a pre-Christian god, worshipped by the Celts in Britain. In an age of superstition, green was the colour of elves and fairies, creatures of the forests, malevolent sprites who preyed upon children. Some scholars theorise that tales of strange creatures developed in the tumultuous times during and after the Norman Invasion, when the old Anglo-Saxon way of life was being threatened and parents sought to warn their offspring about the dangers of associating with foreigners.
Did the Green Maiden of Suffolk exist? I hope my efforts will provide a definitive answer.
Arthur A. R. Cockrill, Esq., B.Litt., MA, FSA Moreton Appley Hall, Chelmsford
I hoped so too. Cockrill had taken on quite a challenge.
The first chapter had to do with the surprising number of variations on the legend, each with its own tradition of origin. I skimmed through, marking interesting paragraphs with Post-it Notes.
Several versions of the legend claimed that rather than marrying a farmer, Mersia had married an important landowner in Essex named Randúlfr Leofwine and bore him a son named Wulfmær. The strength of this argument lay in the details. According to these accounts, Randúlfr died soon after the boy’s birth, leaving his dowager a fine manor house and many acres of farmland, which she spurned, preferring to dwell in a simple cottage by the river. I thought of the photograph hanging over Evelyn Villiers’s bed. That cottage was old, but not nine centuries old.
Several versions agreed with the May Fair pageant’s—that Mersia’s husband accused her of being a witch after she tried to poison him. One version insisted it was the son who had betrayed her in order to claim his inheritance.
All versions agreed that Mersia died in a flood, but exactly how that happened was a matter of controversy—an unfortunate accident or deliberate murder?
With the concept of betrayal submerged in my brain like an iceberg, my only real takeaway was the reference to rivers—rivers were becoming a theme. But I could hardly tell Professor Markham my startling revelation had to do with two women living nine hundred years apart who both liked flowing water.
I read on.
Cockrill had dedicated several chapters to tediously detailed scientific explanations of his day for green skin. In the end, he’d landed on two theories. The first associated a green cast to the skin with arsenic and copper poisoning. Arsenic, he noted, was favored by medieval alchemists, and copper was used as a mordant in the plant-based green wool dyes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. That sounded plausible, especially since the alternative theory claimed green skin was produced by green sickness, an ailment apparently common to Victorian virgins, which, like hysteria and “wandering uterus,” was cured by sexual relations and childbirth. Right.
When I Googled “green sickness,” though, I found something interesting. The actual name for it, chlorosis, is a real medical condition, known today as hypochromic anemia, a rare blood disorder that occurs when red blood cells lack normal levels of hemoglobin.
Interesting but hardly startling. Professor Markham would already know the medical explanations. I needed something more.
At six thirty Vivian called me down for Welsh rarebit, made with local cheddar and brown ale. She was spoiling me, and I knew it. To be fair, I had offered to share the cooking. She’d refused, saying that foreign food didn’t agree with her stomach.
Fortified, I returned to my bedroom and pushed ahead toward the final chapters.
By eight I was getting sleepy. And discouraged. Could I bluff my way through the meeting with Professor Markham? Could I spin a few curious facts into something solid enough to win his trust, or would he throw me out before even looking at the Old English phrase?
So far I’d learned nothing except that the version presented at the May Fair wasn’t the only one. Is that what Evelyn Villiers meant when she implied they’d gotten the story wrong? Did it even matter after nine hundred years?
One thing I’ve never been is a quitter. As Vivian and Fergus had retired, I slipped down to the kitchen and made myself a mug of Ovaltine before finishing Cockrill’s book.
Like so many things in life, the final chapter was a game changer.
Where Lies the Truth?
Like many legends, the tale of the Green Maiden of Suffolk rests upon stories handed down from generation to generation. We have already proved that, scientifically speaking, such a woman might have existed [cf. Chapters 2 and 3]. Now, based upon hitherto unknown records uncovered by the author in the archives of the Church of the Blessed Virgin in the Essex village of Dunmow Parva, we shall endeavour to prove that she actually did exist.
Dunmow Parva? Suddenly I was no longer sleepy.
The earliest known parish records in England date from 1538, when Henry VIII issued a mandate that every parson, vicar and curate in the realm was to record all weddings, christenings and burials. Over time, the information entered into the parish registers became more fulsome and personal.
In the years after the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, the current incumbent of the Church of the Blessed Virgin in Dunmow Parva, Robert Bisbie, LL.D. (1633—1688), recorded not only details of the church sacraments but also, on occasion, his thoughts and opinions concerning such village events as the defacing of tombstones by village ruffians and the number of souls lost in the plague year, 1666.
Salient to our current investigation is
