The story is one of the many folk-tales concerning the conversion of mortals into trees which Ovid has so gracefully elaborated in his _Metamorphoses_, and which assume a new importance now that we can trace them back into that old world when tree and man, and indeed all living things, were held to be so near akin. How far they owed their origin to the desire to find a new sanction for the traditional tree-worship by investing it with a human interest, it is impossible to say. It is sufficient for us that they demonstrate the survival of very ancient modes of thought amongst races who had otherwise reached a high degree of civilisation. They were amongst the miracles of classical antiquity, and like other miracles, if they prove nothing else, they at least afford invaluable evidence as to the state of mental culture amongst those who found them credible. One of the most interesting of these metamorphosis legends concerns the fate of the three daughters of the Sun and Clymene, who were so heart-broken at the tragic fate of their brother Phaëton that they were changed into poplars by the banks of the stream into which he had been hurled,—the Eridanus or Po. The tears they shed were preserved in the form of amber:— As she bent To kneel, Phaëthusa, eldest born, her feet Felt stiffen, and Lampetië, at her cry Starting, took sudden root, and strove in vain For motion to her aid. The third, her hair In anguish tearing, tore off leaves! And now Their legs grow fixed as trunks, their arms as boughs Extend, and upward round them creeps a bark That gradual folds the form entire, save yet The head and mouth, that to their mother shrieks For help. What help is hers to give? Now here, Now there she rushes, frantic, kissing this Or that while yet she can, and strives to rend Their bodies from the clasping bark, and tears The fresh leaves from their sprouting heads, and sees, Aghast, red drops as from some wound distil. And “Ah, forbear!” the sufferer shrieks; “forbear, O mother dear! our bodies in these trees Alone are rent! Farewell!” And o’er the words, Scarce-uttered, closed the bark, and all was still. But yet they weep; and in the sun their tears To amber harden, by the clear stream caught And borne, the gaud and grace of Latian maids.[170] The story of Baucis and Philemon—the worthy peasants who so hospitably entertained the gods, Zeus and Hermes, disguised as travellers, that their cottage was changed into a temple and they themselves into its priest and priestess—is more familiar. Their prayer that neither should witness the death of the other was fulfilled by the gods, by means of a device familiar enough to the folk-lore of the time:—