In our secular age, most of us scoff at the supernatural. Consequently, it is difficult to put ourselves in the mindsets of our medieval counterparts who still lived in a world of unexplored wilderness and unexplained phenomena. God’s natural creation was potentially infinite, allowing for the existence of fairies and goblins, while angels, demons, and saints had the power to create the supernatural, infinitely expanding the realms of possibility. These beliefs were consistent with the cosmology of the day. So, what did people in medieval England think about the supernatural?
The Arrival of Little Green Men
Sometime in the 12th century, during the troubled reign of King Stephen, in the village of Woolpit (a mangled version of its original Old English name “Wulf-pytt”), the villagers were bringing in the harvest. Suddenly, they came across two children next to one of the old wolf pits. They tried to speak to them, but their language was strange. Their clothing was completely unfamiliar. But most concerningly of all, their skin was green.
They were taken to the home of a local knight. They initially refused to eat anything but raw broad beans but soon adapted to a normal diet. In time, their skin color changed closer to normal. The boy, unfortunately, grew sickly and died. The girl, however, thrived and, once she learned English, explained that they had come from St Martin’s Land, where the sun never shone and everyone was green. She didn’t know how she arrived in the village.
Some modern scholars have grasped at what they see as “rational” explanations for these kinds of incredible stories. Paul Harris suggested that they were the lost children of Flemish immigrants, and “St Martin’s Land” was simply the nearby village of Fornham St Martin. No medieval chronicler who recorded the incident, however, was able to explain the origins of the children, at least not in such a mundane way. These were not 19th-century folklorists recording local traditions and myths but men writing what they believed to be the facts of the matter. They didn’t feel that they needed to proffer what we could consider “rational” explanations.
There were similar stories of green people and underground realms across the country. A Peak District swineherd reportedly followed a stray sow into an underground land where fields were being harvested. A Sunderland man was kidnapped by three green youths on horseback to a forest kingdom, where he was inveigled to drink a green drink and to join their society. When he did not cooperate, he was robbed of his power of speech as punishment. A Yorkshire peasant, after a night of drinking, came across a crowd feasting inside an old barrow and was again tempted with a drink. He poured away the contents and escaped with the unusually shaped fairy cup, which supposedly ended up in the royal treasury. Walter Map stressed how such “fairy” creatures secluded themselves in secret.
Not Quite Human
Perhaps contemporaries may have initially treated the drunken Yorkshireman’s story with some skepticism, but generally, it was taken for granted that supernatural peoples and lands existed. Green people were just one example. It was also assumed that there were realms above. Gervase of Tilbury tells the story of people leaving a church—he doesn’t state where—and seeing an anchor fall from the sky. Soon after, sailors emerged from the clouds and tried to haul it up.
There were also beings under the water. Similar stories appear in Ireland from the 8th century. One piece of evidence was a wild man caught in nets off the Suffolk coast who did not speak and ate only raw fish. He was imprisoned in Orford Castle before escaping and vanishing into the sea. Although varied, the beings were seen as contiguous by contemporary intellectuals, who grouped them together in their chronicles and books.
There could even be sexual contact between these beings and humans. The green girl of Woolpit grew up and married a man from King’s Lynn. Walter Map tells of a knight in the age of William of Conqueror who comes across a group of tall “fairy” women dancing in woodland and falls in love with one of them. She bears a child who, to Walter’s surprise, becomes a pious benefactor of the church. St. Augustine had written of incubi, demons, and woodland spirits that seduced women. Such creatures were said to be the ancestors of Merlin in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, who he says are not demons, but part-human and part-angel.
Medieval Cosmology
It is modern arrogance to assume that the people of medieval England—and Europe more widely—were stupid or naïve for believing in these beings. The nature and substance of the universe were carefully considered and analyzed by scholars over the centuries. It is best summarized by Anselm, an 11th-century theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury, who said that all events could be categorized into three types: those that depended on God’s power, those produced by nature “through the power God has implanted in it,” and those that came from the will of one of God’s creations. John of Salisbury also wrote that nature was always rational and logical, even if divinely willed. Nevertheless, all accepted that this natural order could be breached, for example, through the miracles of saints. These fit nicely into Anselm’s first category. Other “supernatural” phenomena were harder to categorize.
Accounts had to come from either first-hand experience, reliable witnesses, or some other form of evidence. For example, the evidence that Britain and the world had once been inhabited by giants was proven for writers like Ralph of Coggeshall by giant teeth and a commensurate rib bone found in Essex, plus the bones of a giant’s head in Yorkshire. There were contemporary throwbacks to these giants, such as a man from Wales who was “five cubits” in height. By contrast, a distinction was drawn between these stories and those that Gervase of Tilbury called the “lying tongues” of traveling minstrels. Medieval cosmologies made clear that there were angels, demons, humans, and animals, and great minds worked on categorizing and defining them.
Categorizing the Supernatural
These same people struggled to find explanations that were “rational” for these other beings. Some posited that they weren’t “real” in the same sense as other things. Others tried to fit them into the “demon” category. Ralph of Coggeshall thought the Suffolk wild man might be an evil spirit inhabiting a drowned man’s body. Others accepted that there were beings that might not fit into any of the known categories. William of Newburgh believed the green children of Woolpit to be “beyond the power of our weak understanding.”
Walter Map argued that these beings were spirits who followed Lucifer unwittingly during his fall. However, not being malicious or supporting the fallen angel, they instead play light-hearted japes on humanity “so that the truth is concealed by a deceptive and ludicrous semblance.” This was certainly the preferred explanation for creatures such as hobgoblins. They were considered mischievous entities of various forms who were irritating more than threatening and usually banished. In one instance, in the Blackdown Hills in Somerset, they were banished for playing pranks. In Spaldington in Yorkshire, it was for spilling the milk and re-mixing the wheat and chaff. The Portuni were similar, described by Gervase of Tilbury as enjoying traveling with solitary riders and then snatching the reins to drive the horse into a bog.
This acceptance of the supernatural as a part of everyday life meant that things that we now find fantastical and extraordinary were treated seriously, warranting studious investigation and explanation. Werewolves were one such example of a breach between the separate categories of human and animal, where one shapeshifts into another. Gervase of Tilbury said that werewolves were common in England. Gerald of Wales recounted how the people of Ossory in Ireland had been cursed by a local saint so that two of them had to live for seven years at a time as wolves. The account was taken seriously enough that an assembly was held to discuss whether killing them would be considered a homicide.
There were also stories of women turning into snakes. A manuscript of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy from the 12th century includes a long discussion over whether the story of Ulysses’ men transforming into animals could happen, with the author claiming that feeding humans with certain foods could cause such an event. Gerald of Wales instead drew on St. Augustine to argue that demons or wicked men could transform the physical appearance of men or animals with God’s permission, but not their true form.
Beasts and Monsters
There were also monstrous animals lurking in the wilderness. Dragons are the most notorious. England was full of accounts of their various types. Some stories follow a form, for example, the multiple stories of a knight and his dog both falling from a dragon’s venom after slaying it.
The arrival of the Vikings at Lindisfarne had, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, been heralded by the appearance of fiery dragons in the sky. The church of Nunnington, Yorkshire features a tomb with the likeness of a knight and his dog who were both killed by a dragon’s venom after slaying it in the nearby Loschy Wood. Some, like the Loshy and Kellington dragons, were serpentine and venomous. Others, like those seen fighting over Waverley in Surrey in 1222 or those that portended the arrival of the Vikings in Lindisfarne in 793, were flying fire-breathers.
Angels and Demons
Angels and demons, of course, were present in England. Both were considered superior to humans in the chain of being, with higher intellects and greater powers over the natural world. The fallen status of demons did not diminish their abilities or superiority. A man from County Durham was pursued home one night by a pack of black dogs. When he looked out his window, they had merged into one enormous dog, who promptly jumped through the window, into his mouth, and possessed him, exorcised only by a miracle of St. Cuthbert. A hermit on Farne was tempted by a devil who shapeshifted through a variety of animals.
William of Corbeil, who was later to be Archbishop of Canterbury, was surrounded on his sickbed by a group of demons who laughed about what they would do to his soul, only to be told by a woman who suddenly appeared—who he later realized to be the Virgin Mary—that Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael would fight them for it. The demons went away but returned, armed, in greater numbers, only to be denied again by the Virgin, who was then replaced herself by the archangels. Others had less renowned guardian angels. One Yorkshire peasant forgot to make the sign of the cross before sleep. He was only saved from two predatory demons by an angel in the form of a glimmering young warrior. “Everyone,” wrote one English priest with the Second Crusade, “has a guardian angel assigned to him.”
Stories such as this should bring home to us that belief in such creatures did not imply stupidity. These beings who did not fit into the orthodox order of the world were held to be true by all, whether they were accomplished clergymen, great kings, valiant knights, or everyday laborers. In fact, the more learned you were, the more you were familiar with the infinite power of God and the history of his works. Consequently, it was not much of a stretch to believe, as Robert Bartlett puts it, that “below the Essex fields, within the Yorkshire barrows, and beyond the Suffolk shore were creatures who lived an alien life of their own.”
Select Bibliography
“The Serpent Legends of Yorkshire,” The Leisure Hour, vol. 72, no. 1375 (May 4, 1878)
J. Carey (1992) “Aerial Ships and Underwater Monasteries: The Evolution of a Monastic Marvel,” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 12:16-28.
J. Stephenson (ed.) (1875) Ralph of Coggeshall: Chronicon Anglicanum, Cambridge.
R. Bartlett (2000) England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075-1225. Oxford.
T. Forester (ed.) (2000) Giraldus Cambrensis: The Topography of Ireland, Cambridge, Ontario.
T. Parkinson (1889) Yorkshire Legends and Traditions, as Told by Her Ancient Chroniclers, Her Poets, and Journalists, London.
