User:DukeEdel

HOW TAYUM GOT ITS NAME

"TAYUM" is the ilocano name of the indigo plant growing in abundance, since long ago, on the sandy banks of the ABRA RIVER. The Ilocanos extracted a dark blue color from this plant with which they dyed the cotton yarn they wove on hand-and-foot looms. this dye helped boost the ilocano woven cloth that brought fame and wealth to Ilocandia. The indigo industry must have been rising very well in TAYUM. A vat used for making dye, was still standing in a field barrio DEET until the place was eroded by devastating flood of 1908. Our grandparents say that the indigo plants grew in wild profusion on the vast stretches of sand bordering the ABRA RIVER. But they never cared to gather or smell their tiny deep violet flowers on the way to the river for a bath. Strange but true, no trace of indigo plants can be found now. The intervening years with floods have done away with it.

There are two versions on how Tayum got its name. One is that the church of Tayum was built atop a foothill with a vat-shaped lake as its base. Graceful bamboos and other trees grew all around its rim. The waters mirrored the blue sky and the dark green trees, making the lake deep blue dye matched.

However, the lake is now distorted in shape because of the annual swelling of the Abra River in the blue waters matching the deep blue dye from the Tayum plants.

Another is that when the first missionaries occupied Tayum, there was a big tree with large leaves and fruits of the small Tayum plants bordering the Abra River. They planted the seeds of this big tree, but the fruits remained no bigger than those of the common Tayum plant. They also tried to extract dye from the large leaves of the small plant. And because they thought this to be a wonder tree in the locality, the missionary parish priests agreed to christen the town "TAYUM".

--DukeEdel (talk) 06:59, 17 June 2011 (UTC)EDT