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Dryads are tree nymphs in Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
. In Greek drys signifies 'oak,' from an Indo-European root *derew(o)- 'tree' or 'wood'. Thus dryads are specifically the nymph
Nymph

In Greek mythology, a nymph is any member of a large class of mythological entities in human form. They were typically associated with a particular location or landform....
s of oak
Oak

The term oak can be used as part of the common name of any of about 400 species of trees and shrubs in the genus Quercus , which are listed in the List of Quercus species, and some related genera, notably Lithocarpus....
 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
Walter Burkert

Walter Burkert , a scholar of Greek mythology and Cult , is an emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States....
 remarked of Greek nature deities (Burkert 1986, p174).






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Dryads are tree nymphs in Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
. In Greek drys signifies 'oak,' from an Indo-European root *derew(o)- 'tree' or 'wood'. Thus dryads are specifically the nymph
Nymph

In Greek mythology, a nymph is any member of a large class of mythological entities in human form. They were typically associated with a particular location or landform....
s of oak
Oak

The term oak can be used as part of the common name of any of about 400 species of trees and shrubs in the genus Quercus , which are listed in the List of Quercus species, and some related genera, notably Lithocarpus....
 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
Walter Burkert

Walter Burkert , a scholar of Greek mythology and Cult , is an emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States....
 remarked of Greek nature deities (Burkert 1986, p174). Normally considered to be very shy creatures, except around the goddess Artemis
Artemis

In Greek mythology, Artemis was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Hellenic goddess of forests and hills, child birth/virginity/fertility, the hunt and was often depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows.....
, who was known to be a friend to most nymphs.

Meliai

Dryad11
The dryads of ash tree
Ash tree

Fraxinus is a genus of usually medium to large trees, mostly deciduous though a few subtropical species are evergreen. The leaf are opposite , and mostly pinnately-compound, simple in a few species....
s were called the Meliai
Meliae

In Greek mythology, the Meliae or Meliai were nymphs of the ash tree, whose name they shared. They appeared from the drops of blood spilled when Cronus castrated Uranus , according to Hesiod, Theogony 187....
. The ash-tree sisters tended the infant Zeus
Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
 in Rhea
Rhea (mythology)

This page is about the Greek mythological figure. For the bird, see Rhea .Rhea was the Titan daughter of Ouranos , the sky, and Gaia , the earth, in Classical Greece mythology....
's Cretan cave. Rhea gave birth to the Meliai after being made fertile by the blood of castrated Ouranos. They were also sometimes associated with fruit
Fruit

The term fruit has different meanings dependent on context, and the term is not synonymous in food preparation and biology. In botany, which is the scientific study of plants, fruits are the ripened Ovary of flowering plants....
 trees.

Hamadryad

Dryads, like all nymphs, were supernaturally long-lived and tied to their homes, but some were a step beyond most nymphs. These were the hamadryad
Hamadryad

Hamadryads are Greek mythology beings that live in trees. They are a specific species of dryad, which are a particular type of nymph. Hamadryads are born bonded to a specific tree....
s 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.

Daphnaie

In the myth of Daphne
Daphne

According to Greek mythology, Apollo chased the nymph Daphne , daughter either of Peneus and Creusa in Thessaly, or of Ladon River in Arcadia. The pursuit of a local nymph by an Twelve Olympians, part of the archaic adjustment of religious cult in Greece, was given an arch anecdotal turn in Ovid's Metamorphoses, where the god's infatuati...
, the nymph was pursued by Apollo
Apollo

In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Apollo , is one of the most important and many-sided of the Twelve Olympians. The ideal of the kouros , Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more....
 and became a dryad associated with the laurel
Lauraceae

The Lauraceae or Laurel family comprises a group of flowering plants included in the order Laurales. The family contains about 55 genera and over 2000 species world-wide, mostly from warm or tropical regions, especially Southeast Asia and Brazil....
.

Link to Celtic Druids

Phillip Freeman, a classics professor, discusses a later reference to Dryades, which he translates as Druidesses, writing that "The fourth century A.D. collection of imperial biographies known as the Historia Augusta contains three short passages involving Gaulish women called "Dryades" ("Druidesses")." He points out that "In all of these, the women may not be direct heirs of the Druids who were supposedly wiped out by the Romans—but in any case they do show that the druidic function of prophesy continued among the natives in Roman Gaul."

See also

  • Kodama
    Kodama (spirit)

    A is a kami from Japanese folklore, which is believed to live in certain trees . Cutting down a tree which houses a kodama is thought to bring misfortune, and such trees are often marked with shimenawa rope....
     a similar Japanese spirit
  • Ghillie Dhu
    Ghillie Dhu

    In Scottish mythology the Ghillie Dhu or Ghillie Dubh is a faerie, a guardian spirit of the trees. He is kind to children, but generally wild and shy....
     a similar Scottish spirit
  • Dryads in popular culture
    Dryads in popular culture

    Dryads have appeared several times in cultural works.*Seen in John Keats's poem Ode to a Nightingale in line 7 where the bird is compared to a Dryad....


Sources

  • Graves, Robert
    Robert Graves

    Robert Ranke Graves was an England poet, translator and novelist. During his long life, he produced more than 140 works. He was the son of the Anglo-Irish writer Alfred Perceval Graves and Amalie von Ranke, a niece of the famous German historian Leopold von Ranke....
    , 1960. The Greek Myths, 82.i; 86.2.
  • Burkert, Walter
    Walter Burkert

    Walter Burkert , a scholar of Greek mythology and Cult , is an emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States....
    , 1985. Greek Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).


External links

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