In a modern development of the tale the green children are associated with the Babes in the Wood, left to die after being poisoned with arsenic by their wicked uncle (the arsenic explaining their colouration). Fleeing from the wood in which they were abandoned, possibly nearby Thetford Forest, the children fell into the pits at Woolpit where they were discovered. Local author and folk singer Bob Roberts states in his 1978 book "A Slice of Suffolk" that "I was told there are still people in Woolpit who are 'descended from the green children', but nobody would tell me who they were!"