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SUPERSTITIONS : The Giving Of Different Flowers & Their Significance

LORE & SOURCES
During the 19th century the language of flowers reached an extraordinary degree of complexity.  Each flower had its own inner meaning to the aficionado.  Anemones meant withered hopes.  A Lily was thought to be unlucky and fickle.  Carnations meant marriage and eternal love and remains today the most popular flower at weddings.  Forget-me-nots were sent to tell of true love.  A skilled arranger could, with his floral vocabulary, actually send a clear and precise message to his beloved, chastising her for being unfaithful or proposing a secret tryst. 


Flowers are still among the most popular of ritual gifts, and unlike other produce cannot yet easily have their essence destroyed by technology.  A rose is ever a rose, for not even science can retain the smell, touch, look and magic once the petals are plucked for closer examination.


All the way from ancient Egypt and the pagan followers of Mother Earth, a gift of flowers brought good fortune and love so that the massive industry all around the world that grows and distributes the numerous varieties has done nothing but disperse good luck to us all.


Marigolds may be safely brought into the home for they are the flowers of the sun, while the daffodil, Wordsworth's favourite, was once used as a substitute for sacrifice and should therefore be adored only outside.  Roses are a symbol of love and must therefore be given to the bride on her wedding day, while any purple flower brings good fortune in finance.  The white carnation, often worn by the bridegroom and ushers at a wedding ceremony, means an offering of pure love (as opposed to sexual love) and admiration, and Mimosa, white lilac and heavily scented flowers of any kind are to be employed at funerals and therefore tend to indicate bad fortune.  Red and white flowers together must not be brought into the home because of their ancient association with diseased lovers from Roman times.


Once again, much of the more poetic and dramatic aspects of flower superstition derive from the pagan sacrifice rituals of thousands of years ago.  The May hawthorn flower was braided and used to crown the heads of those to be sacrificed to the harvest, and many flowers, such as the snowdrop, were thought to contain the souls of the dead within their petals.


In the more remote parts of England, there is still undertaken the beautiful ritual of flower pairing, in which sets of two flowerbuds are taken to a secret location such as a hayloft.  Here the names of all the young lovers in the local village are written onto pieces of paper and tied about the stamens of the flowers, each flower being cut to indicate the height of each young person.  The flowers are then left to blossom, and as they grow and change their position, some will entwine themselves around each other.  Each 'couple' created indicates the romantic potentials in the village.  If a flower turns away from another then an estrangement is indicated, and blossoming early shows a likely offspring.  A flower that dies early will forebode the death of the individual, and a downcast position indicates sickness.

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