Why Roses Are Red

Note: there were lots of stories explaining why roses are red. This, to me, was the most morbid of all of them. If you are of a Judeo-Christian background, and will be offended by me calling a story about Cain and Abel morbid, do me a favor, and please don’t read this.

There is…a Talmudic legend…that tells how the rose was painted red:

At midnight before the vernal equinox, when Cain and Abel were to make their offerings to the Lord, a vision came to their mother, Eve. She saw a little lamb bleeding its life away on Abel’s altar, and the white roses he had planted about it were suddenly full blown and red. Voices cried about her, as in despair, but they died away and only a wonderful music was heard instead. Then, as the shadows lifted from her eyes, a vast plain unfolded, more beautiful than the paradise she had left, and grazing there were flocks watched by a shepherd whose robe of white was so fine and shining that the eye was dazzled by it. He wore a wreath of roses which Eve recognized as having lately grown about the altar, and he struck the strings of a lute, waking entrancing harmony.

Day broke, and, dismissing the vision as an idle dream, Eve watched her sons as they went forth to make sacrifice to the deity. She heard the cries of the little creatures of the flocks as they were put to death, and was glad that her children were willing to do this thing in the belief that suffering was agreeable to the author of life and love. At evening her sons were still afield, and as darkness came she went to seek them. Her dream returned to her, and she was disturbed. The fires on the two altars had burned out, and the bodies of the lambs were charred and broken. From a cave hard by sounded roarings of despair: she knew the voice for Cain’s. And before his younger brother’s altar lay the most pitiful sacrifice of all: the body of Abel, cold and rigid; and his blood had bespattered all the roses he had planted. Eve sank upon the body of her son, and again the vision of the night returned: she saw the shining one again, and it was Abel who shepherded in the new paradise. He wore the roses, but they were beautiful and fragrant, and, striking the harp in a triumphant measure, he sang, “Look up and see the stars shining promise through your tears. Those cars of light shall carry us to fields more blooming than Eden. There sighs and moans change to hymns of rapture, and there the rose that has been stained with innocent blood blooms in splendor.”

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company