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dryads

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dryads

divine maidens of the woods. [Gk. and Rom. Myth.: Wheeler, 108]
See: Nymph
Allusions—Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
Her mother is a dryad. Leila, Sarika, Leila's new potential boyfriend, and her dryad mother uncover a plot to poison the area around the grove so an auditorium can be built there and the friends attempt to save the grove.
Thus a tree-fairy (or a dryad) is, or was a minor spirit in the process of creation who aided [...] in the making effective of the divine Tree-idea or some part of it, or of even of some one particular example: some tree.
A valley of trees, heavy footed with kneeling trunks, could be a ring of clunky dryads in mid-metamorphosis, surrounding the site of a former temple.
CLURICAUN As well as a fine assortment of dryads, nymphs, goblins, Ireland has some notable Faery folk.
In the earlier toranas of 2nd-1st century bce, shalabhanjikas (dryads) are employed as bracket figures.
Behind the trees releasing people Unexpectedly as dryads. The arrival
Dark woods, overgrown ruins, sunken gardens, Low, lichen-covered walls, of crumbling stone, drying vines crawling up twisted columns, The haunted forest, a moonlit dryads' circle, Whispered air where ghosts are broken hearts Lie in wait, to connect once more in dreams.
Nowhere more ominously does this occur than in "Song of the Redwood Tree": A California song, A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing, A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense (351)
Sylvia Plath, too, invoked dryads in a pair of poems of 1957.
Hermes was an independent spirit who spread his seed among goddesses nymphs and dryads. Hermes documents his awkward and painful affair with Aphrodite as he comes to understand why this off-and-on relationship with the goddess of Beauty could not work.
The three effectively sung dryads were Andrea Coleman, Katherine Haugen and Karin Wolverton.
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