William of Newburgh[31] says that at Woolpit (Wolf-pits), near Stowmarket in Suffolk, were some very ancient trenches. Out of these trenches there once came, in harvest-time, two children, a boy and a girl, whose bodies were of a green colour, and who wore dresses of some unknown stuff. They were caught and taken to the village, where for many months they would eat nothing but beans. They gradually lost their green colour. The boy soon died. The girl survived, and was married to a man of Lynn. At first they could speak no English; but when they were able to do so they said that they belonged to the land of St. Martin, an unknown country, where, as they were once watching their father’s sheep, they heard a loud noise, like the ringing of the bells of St. Edmund’s Monastery. And then, all at once, they found themselves among the reapers at Woolpit. Their country was a Christian land and had churches. There was no sun there, only a faint twilight; but beyond a broad river there lay a land of light. Giraldus Cambrensis in his _Itinerary of Wales_ tells another queer story of the underground world, and notices that some of the words used in it are closely related to the _British_ tongue.[32] But in neither story are the sun and stars spoken of as stones incrusting the vault. The underground _Rose-garden of Laurin the Dwarf_, by Botzen, is, however, illumined by one great carbuncle.[33] The same sun-stone--a white, marvellous stone--reappears in the “Grail Story,” which is from beginning to end a Christianised Keltic myth. In it the Grail is originally not invariably a basin or goblet, but a stone. It is so in Wolfran von Eschenbach’s _Parzival_. In that there is no thought of it as a chalice: it is a stone which feeds and delights all who surround, cherish, and venerate it. Whatsoever the earth produces, whatsoever exhales, Whatever is good, and sweet, in drink and meat, That yields the precious stone, that never fails. In the Elder Edda, in the _Fiölvinnsmal_, Svipdagr is represented as climbing to the golden halls of heaven, and when he comes there he asks who reigns in that place. The answer given him is:-- Menglöd is her name ... She here holds sway, And has power over These lands and glorious halls. Now Menglöd means she who rejoices in the _Men_, the Precious Stone,[34] that is, the sun. She is the holder of the sun, as in the Yorkshire story the lass holds the golden ball.