Dryad: Encyclopedia - Dryad

Dryad

• Asclepius, god of medicine
• Leto, mother of Apollo
  and Artemis
• Pan, shepherd god

• Alseid
• Auloniad
• Crinaeae
• Dryads
• Hamadryads
• Hesperides
• Limnades

• Meliae
• Naiads
• Napaeae
• Nereids
• Oceanids
• Oreads
• Pegaeae

Dryads are female tree spirits in Greek mythology. In Greek drys signifies 'oak,' from an Indo-European root *derew(o)- 'tree' or 'wood.' Thus dryads are specifically the nymphs of oak trees, though the term has come to be used for all tree nymphs in general. "Such deities are very much overshadowed by the divine figures defined through poetry and cult," Walter Burkert remarked of Greek nature deities (Burkert 1986, p174).

The nymphs of ash trees were called the Meliai. The ash-tree sisters tended the infant Zeus in Rhea's Cretan cave. Rhea gave birth to the Meliai after being made fertile by the blood of castrated Ouranos.

Dryads, like all nymphs, were supernaturally long-lived and tied to their homes, but some were a step beyond most nymphs. These were the hamadryads who were an integral part of their trees, such that if the tree died, the hamadryad associated with it died as well. For these reasons, dryads and the Greek gods punished any mortals who harmed trees without first propitiating the tree-nymphs.

In the Greek myth of Aristaeus and the bees, in order to renew his declining swarm, Aristaeus is instructed by Cyrene to set up four altars in the woods to the dryads, companions of Eurydice, whose death he had inadvertently caused, and make a sacrifice of four young bulls and four heifers, from whose putrifying carcasses the new swarms of bees arose. Virgil, Georgics, iv.317ff.

See also the myth of Daphne, who was pursued by Apollo and became a dryad associated with the laurel.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Dryad", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki