OREAD

 OREAD

"Shy Oreads lur'd from distant hills
By melodies of reedy rills,
Ethereal Dryads from the wood,
And river-gods in festive mood,
All fir'd with Corybantian glee
To dance, aerial Nymph for thee!"

H.P. Lovecraft, The Spirit Of the Summer

"As for the child, as soon as he sees the light of the sun, the deep-breasted Mountain (oreskôoi) Nymphai [i.e. Oreiades] who inhabit this great and holy mountain (Ida) shall bring him up. They rank neither with mortals nor with immortals: long indeed do they live, eating ambrosia and treading the lovely dance among the immortals, and with them the Seilenoi and the sharp-eyed Argeiphontes (Hermes) mate in the depths of pleasant caves; but at their birth pines or high-topped oaks spring up with them upon the fruitful earth, beautiful, flourishing trees, towering high upon the lofty mountains (and men call them holy places of the immortals, and never mortal lops them with the axe); but when the fate of death (moira thanatoio) is near at hand, first those lovely trees wither where they stand, and the bark shrivels away about them, and the twigs fall down, and at last the life of the Nymphe and of the tree leave the light of the sun together."

Greek epic C7th or 6th B.C., Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite