hamadryad

plural hamadryads · plural hamadryades

1. Greekhuman sciencesA wood-nymph who was physically a part of her tree; she would die if her tree were felled.

   One of the most interesting species of Nymphs is the Dryads, or Hamadryads, those personifications of the vegetable life of plants.

   1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume II, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 228

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   The hamadryades have gone, like the golden fancies of which they were engendered—morning dreams of a young world scarce awake, but full of freshness and beauty. Yet often will the thought, or rather the fancy, come across me, that this wailing but most musical noise—heard in the dim evening, when every tree has a separate sound like a separate instrument, and every leaf a differing tone like the differing notes—is the piteous lament of some nymph pent within the gray and mossy trunk whence she may never more emerge in visible loveliness.

   1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVIII, in Romance and Reality. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 301

   The various supports, rafters, braces and plates are of pandanus logs of a rich oily brown, and make one think of a sylvan cathedral where hamadryads might very well dance, where Syrinx might be chased by Pan, Daphne by Apollo, and various other heathen rites take place in the dark hours before the dawn.

   1929, Robert Dean Frisbee, The Book of Puka-Puka, Eland, published 2019, page 106

2. A king cobra.
3. A baboon of species Papio hamadryas, venerated by the ancient Egyptians.
4. Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genera Hamadryas and Tellervo.