Saturday, September 5, 2009

Flowers, Saints, and Taxi Drivers

It's called flowers wilt. It's called apples rot. It's called thieves get rich and saints get shot. It's called God don't answer prayers a lot. Alright, now you know.

Stephen Joshua Sondheim ~Merrily We Roll Along.~ a musical.


One of my recent visits to an exposition at a museum or musée was inside a lovely old church. What a great idea to use a beautiful building to house exhibitions instead of letting them fall into a state of disrepair like many churches today.

A mixture of Old & New


Many of the items within were adorned with flowers. We saw paintings, marriage gifts, tokens for sweethearts, and religious items too. We also enjoyed a special exhibition of kimonos many of which featured flowers and plants. The views out of the back of the building were lovely too, an enclosed garden.


Photographs were forbidden inside the museum, however once outside we clicked away taking shots of the building. The museum is called La Verriere however on many of the doors we had seen initails S F what was the significance?

Saint Fiacre ~ Patron Saint of gardeners & taxi drivers!


Saint Fiacre was born in Ireland and lived in a type of monastery (a hermitage), and had a knack of healing people with plants and therefore people flocked to him. It seems he only wanted a quiet life and fled to France to a place called Meaux near Paris! He was given a place of solitude in the forest by Saint Faro.

So why taxi drivers? The Hôtel de St-Fiacre, in the Rue St-Martin, Paris, in the middle of the seventeenth century first hired out small horse drawn carriages. The sign of the hotel was an image of Saint Fiacre, and the coaches eventually took his name and were called fiacres.

Double crossed


Inside from outside



The word Saint is from old French seint from Latin sanctus "holy"

To read more about the Saint (who I had never heard of) click HERE.

The French word for glass roof is verriere.

The French word for rack and ruin or fall into disrepair is délabrer.

10 comments:

French Fancy... said...

Saints don't do it for me but Mr Sondheim does. I love the scores he has written and have most of them. I haven't got Merrily though.

I am pleased you like him

x

Clive said...

Enjoyed reading about St Fiachra - great to produce a Saint to take care of the garden and taxi-drivers wasn't it!

Can't say that he's very popular here in Ireland but have seen several statues on him on several US blogs - his statues sell well in the US to gardeners!

Anyway, a bit like St Patrick I guess the legend lives on!

♥ Braja said...

Lovely photos Blu....and I like the French word for "rack and ruin" :)

Re your comment on my blog, yes, I do believe everything is our own doing. Nothing is random. I may not have 'chosen' an accident---who would choose to suffer? But in a very real way we *do* choose it by our past actions. Like Einsten said, every action has a positive or negative reaction. It's science, and it's also how the world works. I deserved that. Somewhere along the line I did something to warrant that happening to me. And since we are all in possession of our God-given freedom of choice, then I *chose* to do something negative and incur a negative reaction.

claire p said...

I want to come and live with you!!! You live in such a cool place.

DAB said...

What a lovely quirky place. My kind of town :) TFx

French Fancy... said...

Returned to look at the photos with a bit more care - I was so knocked out at seeing a bit of Sondheim I actually skate through the rest of it

Great photos

LadyFi said...

What a lovely museum... Your photos are just wonderful!

bindu said...

Your pictures have so much perspective!

Carol said...

Fab post hon!! I love the idea that there is a Saint of Taxi drivers and Plants...odd combination but it made me chortle!!

Gorgeous photos as always

C x

Ps. No pressure but I am really looking forward to seeing the photo's of your artistic endeavours!!

John said...

More great photos and another very interesting post Blue. Love reading them......also improving my french vocabulaire!!