Wonder Stories: The Best Myths for Boys and GirlsBailey, Carolyn Sherwin
General
Wonder Stories: The Best Myths for Boys and Girls
Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin
Mythology, Classical -- Juvenile literature
The dryads were those favored children of the gods who lived in the
ancient woods and groves, each in her special tree. Dressed in
fluttering green garments, they danced through the woodland ways with
steps as light as the wind, sang to the tune of Pan's pipe, or fled,
laughing, from the Fauns. They missed Pomona in the woods, and tales
came to these forest dwellers of the wonders she was working in the
raising of fruits fit for the table of the gods.
She had trees on which golden oranges and yellow lemons hung among deep
green leaves. She raised citrons and limes, and even cultivated the wide
spreading tamarind tree whose fruit was of such value to Epictetus, the
physician of Greece, in cooling the fires of fever. The wood folk left
their mossy hiding places to peer over the wall of Pomona's orchard and
watch her working so busily there.
They were a strange company. Pan came from Arcadia where he was the god
of flocks and shepherds. He had fastened some reeds from the stream
together to make his pipes, and on them he could play the merriest
music. It sounded like birds and the singing of brooks and summer
breezes all in one. With Pan came his family of Fauns, the deities of
the woods and fields. Their bodies were covered with bristling hair,
there were short, sprouting horns on their heads, and their feet were
shaped like those of a goat. Pan was of the same strange guise as the
Fauns were, but to distinguish his rank, he wore a garland of pine about
his head.
These and Pomona's sisters, the dryads, watched her longingly from the
budding time of the year until the harvest. It was a pleasant sight to
see Pomona taking care of her apples. She was never without a pruning
knife which she carried as proudly as Jupiter did his sceptre. With it
she trimmed away the foliage of her fruit trees wherever it had grown
too thick, cut the branches that had straggled out of shape, and
sometimes deftly split a twig to graft in a new one so that the tree
might bear different, better apples.
Pomona even led streams of water close to the roots of the trees so that
they need not suffer from drought. She looked, herself, a part of the
orchard, for she wore a wreath of bright fruits and her arms were often
full of apples almost as huge and golden as the famous apples of
Hesperides.
The dryads and the Fauns begged one, at least, of the apples, but Pomona
refused them all. She had grown selfish through the seasons in which she
had brought her orchard to a state of such bounteous perfection. She
would not give away a single apple, and she kept her gate always locked.
So the wood creatures were obliged to go home empty handed to their
forest places.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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