Nymph
In
Greek mythology, a nymph is any member of a large class of female nature entities, either bound to a particular location or landform or joining the retinue of a god or goddess. Nymphs were the frequent target of lusty
satyrs.
"The idea that rivers are gods and springs divine nymphs," Walter Burkert remarks "is deeply rooted not only in poetry but in belief and ritual; the worship of these deities is limited only by the fact that they are inseparably identified with a specific locality." Nymphs are personifications of the creative and fostering activities of nature, most often identified with the life-giving outflow of springs.
Encyclopedia
In
Greek mythology, a
nymph is any member of a large class of female nature entities, either bound to a particular location or landform or joining the retinue of a god or goddess. Nymphs were the frequent target of lusty
satyrs.
"The idea that rivers are gods and springs divine nymphs," Walter Burkert remarks "is deeply rooted not only in poetry but in belief and ritual; the worship of these deities is limited only by the fact that they are inseparably identified with a specific locality." Nymphs are personifications of the creative and fostering activities of nature, most often identified with the life-giving outflow of springs. The Greek word ??µf? has "bride" and "veiled" among its meanings: hence, a marriagable young woman. Other readers refer the word to a root expressing the idea of "swelling" . The home of the nymphs is on mountains and in groves, by springs and rivers, in valleys and cool grottoes. They are frequently associated with the superior divinities: the huntress
Artemis; the prophetic
Apollo; the reveller and god of
wine,
Dionysus; and with rustic gods such as Pan and
Hermes .
The symbolic marriage with a nymph of a patriarchal leader, often the eponym of a people, is repeated endlessly in Greek origin myths; clearly such a union lent authority to the archaic king and to his line.
Nymph classifications
The different species of nymph are sometimes distinguished according to the different spheres of nature with which they were connected. However, many of these distinctions may not have existed in popular belief at any time, being late inventions. As
Rose states, "the fact is that all these names are simply feminine adjectives, agreeing with the substantive
nympha, and there was no orthodox and exhaustive classification of these shadowy beings." He mentions dryads and hamadryads as nymphs of trees generally, meliai as nymphs of
ash trees, and naiads as nymphs of water, but no others specifically.
Thus, the following is not a Greek classification, but simply a handy modern guide:
- Land Nymphs
- Water Nymphs
- Helead
- Oceanids
- Nereids
- Naiads
- Crinaeae
- Limnades or Limnatides
- Pegaeae
- Potameides
- Eleionomae
- Wood Nymphs
- "Corycian Nymphs"
- Lampades
Foreign adaptations
The Greek nymphs were spirits invariably bound to places, not unlike the Latin
genius loci, and the difficulty of transferring their cult may be seen in the complicated myth that brought Arethusa to Sicily. Among the Greek-educated Latin poets, the nymphs gradually absorbed into their ranks the indigenous Italian divinities of springs and streams , while the Lymphae , Italian water-goddesses, owing to the accidental similarity of name, could be identified with the Greek Nymphae. The mythologies of classicizing Roman poets were unlikely to have affected the rites and cult of individual nymphs venerated by country people in the springs and clefts of
Latium. Among the
Roman literate class their sphere of influence was restricted, and they appear almost exclusively as divinities of the watery element
Depictions in popular culture
Unlike
mermaids, few nymphs have been depicted on film, in television, or in other forms of
mass media and popular culture. Among them are:
- Lady in the Water is a 2006 [i] thriller [i]/fantasy film [i] written [i], ...
, a film by M. Night Shyamalan, which features a water nymph of a mythology he created for the movie.
- Nymphs appear as monsters in the classic CRPG Daggerfall is a first-person freeform [i] computer role-playing game [i] ...
. - Nymphs also appear as monsters in the popular RPG Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy [i] tabletop roleplaying game [i] currently published by Wizards of the Coast [i] ...
. - Nymphs appear in the TV series Charmed is an American [i] television series [i] that ran for eight...
. - Nymphs appear regularily 'summoning the stork' in the Xanth series, but the stork never responds to those signals
- In the series The Belgariad and The Malloreon by David Eddings, the character Ce'Nedra is a dryad.
- Nymph was also the title of a porno movie done with Chasey Lain being a water nymph.
- In the film Sirens, an erotic dream-sequence of a woman swimming turns into a lesbian version of Waterhouse's painting Hylas and the Nymphs.
See also
Footnotes
References
