Nymphs

A nymph is the spirit of a particular natural thing, and Greek has a word for each kind. Naiads belong to fresh water, springs and rivers. Dryads and hamadryads belong to trees, and a hamadryad dies when her tree does. Oreads live on mountains, Nereids and Oceanids in the sea, Meliae in ash trees.

They are divine but not immortal in the Olympian sense. A hamadryad's life is exactly the life of her oak, which makes the Greek attitude to cutting down a sacred grove less superstition than manslaughter. Erysichthon felled one anyway, and Demeter cursed him with a hunger that could not be filled; he ate everything he owned and finally himself.

Their stories are overwhelmingly about pursuit and escape, and escape usually means transformation. Daphne became the laurel to get away from Apollo, and he wore her leaves afterwards. Syrinx became the reeds Pan cut his pipes from. Arethusa became a spring. The pattern is bleak and consistent: a nymph's freedom is available only at the cost of ceasing to be herself.

Some are consequential. Thetis the Nereid is mother of Achilles and powerful enough that Zeus avoided marrying her when he learned her son would exceed his father. Calypso held Odysseus seven years. Echo was cursed by Hera to repeat other people's last words, and wasted away for Narcissus until only the voice was left.

The word gives English nymphology's odder descendants — but also, by way of Latin, 'nymphaea' for water lilies, still named after the spirits of the water they grow in.