Friday 7 November 2014

Floral Friday :: All Saints Flowers - The Yellow Poui


These flowers are everywhere at this time of the year, upon every hill in the distance, they seem to have taken over the island. They are the yellow poui flower. We seem to call them all saints flowers as they bloom around all saints time. Here where I live we do not have Halloween but we do have what I think is our equivalent: all saints day and all souls day.

November 2nd - On all souls day a large number of the population goes out to the graves of their loved ones and place a lit candle on their grave in remembrance. Folklore says that on this day you are likely to see spirits roaming the earth, that sometimes they come back to visit in hopes of finding their loved ones among the masses out placing flowers on their graves and if you are unlucky one will lure you to your death and the after life from whence they came.

It is said that they are granted this one night to visit the land of the living and their loved ones, so people will light a candle on their door step or on their windowsill so that they can find their way back to the house and visit.

It is said that if your candle goes out, your loved one will not be able to find their way back to eternal rest and so will stay with you, at your house and haunt you all your year. As a result, neighbourhood children have been known to run around and blow out peoples candles so they will be haunted by spirits  (your candle must burn all night) It is also said if I remember correctly, that if you are holding a candle on your way home from the cemetery you must keep it lit or unwanted spirits will follow your light and walk with you home where they will stay with you and haunt you.

November 1st - On all saints day people place lit candles in remembrance of the saint. Admittedly I do not know much else as I am not catholic so have not taken much interest in this day.

These is also a beautiful short story of how the poui came to be in existence. A tale of native Indian girl born of fair complexion and golden hair. (sounds familiar if you're born with albinism) Her people feared her and locked her away in a high tower. At the end of the story she dies but she is turned into millions and billions of little yellow poui flowers and scattered about the entire island so that she will never and can never be forgotten.

 I didn't do any editing of most of these shots because I really liked the way the light was coming though them. No pun intended.

Sorry for the slightly spooky post but I do so love a bit of folklore and the folklore of the islands is ever so fascinating to me haha.


Peace. Love. Culture.
This post is a part of the Floral Fridays series and link up.

6 comments

  1. Love this post and the background on all saints day, especially the little details about neighborhood children and their blowing out candles :) and i love these flowers too. yellow is my favorite color and so anything yellow i tend to like :)

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  2. Love your post, for so many reasons. Beautiful photos (love the one where you're reaching out to the flowers)....love the folklore (one of my favourite things when we visited the island we used to holiday to was meeting the older people and just sitting with them and listening to all their tales: of mermaids in the fresh water hole, of pirate treasure buried, of giant squid, and free divers diving incredible depths with no oxygen support) - I miss that time and those people (hoping to go back next summer). Loved the tale of the little girl and the origin of the flowers - just beautiful. These tales root us, I think, but also give us hope and a sense of joy, that's sometimes easy to lose. Loved, also, your little details: the children blowing the candles out, the light on the path....you're a beautiful writer, a beautiful and delicate observer of life xxxx

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  3. Thank you ladies, i'm glad you enjoyed me sharing a little bit of my native life with you as appreciate my some native blooms. I am working hard to appreciate the things that I have as i work towards the things that I want.

    Jane for some reason that blowing out candles fact has stayed so boldly with me for decades, maybe for such a time as this where i could share the experience on here lol I'm learning to like yellow a little more everyday m'self :)

    It's important i think to realise that this is life now, even as we aspire to get to the next phase.

    Helen 'you're a beautiful writer, a beautiful and delicate observer of life xxxx' that comment means so much to me you don't even know! Thank you! <3

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  4. Lovely pictures and thanks for sharing the information about All Saints Day. I absolutely love that story about the native Indian girl and how she changed into billions of little poui flowers. Just beautiful.

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  5. The yellow Poui flower are really pretty. I enjoyed hearing about the Folklore and All Saints day and the native Indian girl.
    Thanks for sharing and I hope you are enjoying the weekend
    Carolyn

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  6. Hey you. This post, alone, deserves its own award: http://iwillbloom.wordpress.com/2014/11/09/one-lovely-blog-award/

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