Singing Wood Nymphs (four)

Description

Very rare
Singing Wood nymphs

Dryades or Tree nymphs
The name nymph comes from the Greek word that means young woman, and so naturally these beings were considered to be female. In Greek drys signifies oak. Thus, dryads are pedantically the nymphs of oak trees.

Young, beautiful, gentle and youthful creatures. And while there is some question about whether they were immortal or not – Hamadryads in particular were linked with the lives of their chosen tree

A beautiful, musical, amorous, ever-young creature that inhabits the loveliest of all wilderness places including clear lakes, streams, and crystalline caverns. Nymphs are exceptionally intelligent and are very, very rarely seen. They are very shy and kind and are never more than a few feet away from their tree. Extremely long lived , they can disappear by stepping into a tree and sing lullabies to the insects, animals and plants of the woods.

Trees sprung up from the earth at their birth, trees to which their lives were closely tied. While the tree flourished, so did its resident nymph, but when it died she withered away with it. In this picture are ghost singing wood nymphs gathered on a departed tree stump.

Different species of Dryades are associated with a particular type of tree

• Meliae are the nymphs of the ash-trees
• Oreiades or Oreads are the nymphs of the hills and mountains, particularly mountain conifers
• Hamadryades are the nymphs of oak and poplar trees – quiet, self-reliant
• Maliades, Meliades or Epimelides were nymphai of apple and other fruit trees – the protectors of sheep flocks and goat herds
• Daphnaie were nymphs of the laurel trees, one of a class of rarer tree-specific nymphai
• Aigeiroi – black poplar
• Ampeloi – grape vine
• Balanis – ilex
• Karyai – hazel-nut
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• Kraneiai – cherry-tree
• Moreai – mulberry
• Pteleai – elm
• Sykei – fig
• Caryatids – walnut-trees

Others with simply associated with a location

• Leimoniads – nymphs of the meadow
• Alseides – the sacred groves
• Aulonides – the glens
• Napaiai – the vales
• Naiads – water nymphs by running fresh water
• Oceanids – the oceans
• Nereids – the seas
• Hyades – the clouds