Flowers

I am starting to read and respond to local folklore again. Flowers is a piece written for and published by the North East Pagans magazine.

Flowers 

Source: The Lore of the Land, Westwood & Simpson, p.569, Northumberland ‘Warden’.

Passing from a broken heart was not rare in those times. What was, and is still, rare are the small four-leaved yellow flowers that cover over and far around the grave of one young woman. Her love had fallen to the 1589 Plague and died alongside his kin whilst his betrothed slept through her own suffering four cottages down. On hearing the news that he was burned with others in the pit by Long’s Farm, she walked herself into the river.

They pulled her out and laid her in the church ground marked with a simple cross. She was soon forgotten until one year later when the flowers took root. They wove a carpet over and around her grave, stretching all the way to the edge of Long’s Farm. Their scent was so intoxicating and fresh that the village young would pick them for their hair.

To this day, every year for two weeks—the time between the lovers' deaths—the flowers bloom. And since that time, no one in the village has ever suffered an untimely death or a broken heart.