"Higher and higher came the water, and there at last were the Nymph and the Dryad face to face. The animals had retreated to a hillock behind the tree, and were watching and listening with all their eyes and ears. Higher and higher came the water, and higher still, till the huge old trunk was covered. It was midnight now, and as Christmas Day began the Nymph leapt in among the branches, caught the Dryad in her arms, and kissed her."
this illustration accompanies a story from the new world fairy book - not sure i would recommend the book itself, on account of it being published in 1904 by a white fellow and involving native americans in some capacity. i only read this one story from it.
here is the full story, which is sweet (hope this readmore works!):
Once upon a time, very very long ago, there was a Dryad living in a wood. This Dryad was a beautiful woman who grew out of the heart of a great old oak- tree. She was surrounded and almost hidden by the twisted branches that grew up all round her, lovingly weaving a bower to shelter her from the storms, so you could hardly see that she was really a part of the tree and had no power to leave it.
Poor Dryad ! There she was, and there she had been for a long time. The old oak-tree was right in the middle of an enormous forest — a forest so large that none of the wild animals who lived beside the oak knew where it ended, or even if it had any end. For the Dryad was not alone in the forest. Every day, and all day long, hundreds and hundreds of birds used to perch on the branches of the old oak and sing little songs to the Dryad, before asking her what they were to do and where they were to go.
Every animal loved the Dryad, and she was so very old — though she always looked young — that she could tell them just when to look out for a storm and have their nests all nicely thatched to keep out the rain. She could tell them when the snow was going to fall, so that they could lay in a stock of food for the winter and line their houses with cosy down and wool ; and in the winter she could tell them when to look out for the melting of the snow and the opening of the snow-drops and primroses. Even the owls, who dozed and thought all day long, and only began to rub their great round eyes and shake their great wise heads when the stars were beginning to twinkle — even the wisest of the wise old owls used to shake their heads and say that she knew a great deal more than they did themselves, though they could see in the dark.
The boughs were full of little red and grey squirrels running up and down, and every now and then bringing a very big nut that they had found as a present to the Dryad. Down among the roots that here and there twisted themselves out of the ground, as if there was no room below for their great bodies, there was a very large family of rabbits, and a middle-sized family of foxes, and one solitary old mole, who was so blind and got so confused with all the different passages that he some- times used to tumble right down into the middle of his neighbours. None of them ever minded this in the least, for where the Dryad was there was never any quarrelling.
The Dryad was the queen, and every evening her subjects used to come from all parts of her great kingdom and sit down at the tree's foot or rest among the branches. The Dryad always chose the twilight, before the song-birds had gone to sleep or the lions and owls had set out on their night's wanderings. As soon as she opened her lips there was not another sound to be heard ; and she sang them such wonderfully sweet and sad songs that when she had finished they used to feel quite sorry for her, though they hardly knew the meaning of her words, and they loved her more than ever. Then all the little birds tucked their heads under their wings and fell asleep ; the great owls whooped and away over the tree-tops ; the fawns bounded off and were out of sight almost before you knew they had moved ; and the lions stalked off into the forest so slowly and quietly that you would think they had given up all their cowardly and blood-thirsty habits.
When they were all gone, the Dryad would gather up her long long hair, and, making a pillow of it, lean her head on a branch and try to go to sleep. But she could not go to sleep very easily, and she would spend the long still hours in thinking, thinking, thinking about things that happened so long ago that she some- times thought they had only happened in a dream. They were such sad thoughts that often the Dryad cried herself to sleep. And she sometimes awoke in the middle of the night with a start, thinking that she heard the dull rumbling sound of the sea-waves beating on the shore, and she was sadder than ever when she found it was only the night breeze soughing among the sleepy leaves.
Now I must tell you how the beautiful Dryad came to be part of the oak-tree.
Many years before there were any men and women in the world, it was full of beautiful fairies, who used to play together and work together all day long, and were always loving and happy. They all had work to do, for people can never be happy without work, and neither can fairies. They had to see that all the little animals, and all the big animals too, got just as many of the good things that were meant for them as they ought to get, and no more. Another thing they had to do was to go down under the ground and arrange all the gold and silver, and coal and iron, and diamonds and precious stones, so that when men were put on the earth they should find all these things with just as much trouble as was good for them. They were just as useful when they were at play as when they were at work, for they used to play at making rivers, and draw the water in little channels to the roots of thirsty daisies and buttercups, and they used to play at building castles of rocks, so that the weakest of the tender ferns could find a snug nook to grow in. These fairies were always as happy as could be : because they were always doing good to something or somebody.
But one morning two of them set out on an excursion to a place where they had never been before, to help a big spider build his web by fixing little bars across all the openings that the spider's clumsy fingers had left in it.
The fairies were never allowed to be out after dark, but the spider lived a very long way off, and when he asked them to come he gave them such a lot of fairy candy to eat on their way that they forgot all about the time till they saw that the sun was setting. Then the fairies were quite frightened, and wondered where they should spend the night — for they were a very long way from their own comfortable nests. They went on a little further, but it got very dark, and at last they heard the roar of a stream right in front of them. Just then a pair of fiery eyes seemed to start out of the ground before them, and a sharp voice asked who was outside there.
They knew the voice — it was the voice of an old otter friend of theirs who lived under the overhanging bank — and when the otter found out who they were he made them come into his snug little house, and wanted to make them eat some supper. But they had very bad appetites that evening, after eating so much candy, and they were tired and glad to curl themselves up among the little otters and go to sleep.
In the morning when they awoke the sun was pretty high up, and neither of the fairies felt very comfortable after sleeping in a stuffy little house with otters, and they knew the other fairies would wonder whatever had become of them. However, they bathed in the river, said good-bye to the otter and his children, and went on their journey to where the spider lived.
As they went on, the country began to look brown and dry, and by-and-by there was not a tree or a shrub to be seen. Neither of them had ever been as far as that before, and they had never seen such an ugly place to look at. The road was very dusty, and the fairies' skins got very gritty and dry. The path was covered with stones, too, making it difficult for them to keep on their feet. Now they began to think that no animal they knew would want to make a home for himself in such a dry uncomfortable place, and to wonder what the business of the spider was — for there were no spiders in their country.
They went on and on, and the road got dustier and stonier, and they got very thirsty, but there was no water to drink. At last one of them quite lost her temper, — a thing that no fairy ever did before. Turning sharp round on her companion, with a terribly sour face, she began to scold her for taking them into such a dry place.
This was too bad, because both fairies had come of their own free will. But the other was in just as bad a temper, and her voice was very harsh and her face very sour as she began to scold in her turn, saying it was all the other one's fault.
No sooner had she said this than there came a terrific thunder-clap, and, though the sun had been glaring down on them a minute before, the sky was now black with great thick clouds. Then a perfect torrent of hail poured out of the clouds, and every minute there came a flash of forked lightning that made the black clouds look as if they were on fire ; and then the wind howled around the poor fairies and the thunder rolled and rolled till the earth shook under them. They were terribly frightened when the storm began, and fell down on the ground on their faces. They had never heard thunder before, and the lightning that they had seen on warm summer nights at home used to seem to be only at play.
When at last the awful noise stopped and the fairy who had begun the quarrel lifted her head and looked about her, she was alone — and yet she was sure that there was somebody speaking. The fairy was frightened, and hid her head again, but the voice got more distinct and she heard it say this, — " You have done what no fairy ever did before : you have quarrelled. You may not go back to your old home, and even if you might you would find none of your old friends there. No fairies could live here after this quarrel, so they have been sent to live in another world far away in the sky. As for you, you will be taken to the middle of a great forest, where a young oak-tree has just sprung from the ground. You will make part of that oak-tree, growing as it grows. Your sister has gone to the ocean, and in the ocean she will live. You will not leave the oak, and she will not leave the sea, till the tree and the ocean meet and the Nymph and the Dryad make up their quarrel with a kiss. Then you will go hand in hand to join your happy companions in the beautiful star."
The voice stopped, and when the fairy opened her eyes she found herself peeping out of the leaves of a little oak-tree in the middle of a wood.
That is why the Dryad used to cry herself to sleep, and awake wishing she could hear the sea waves rolling on the shore — the waves that were so long of coming.
The other fairy, too, lifted her head when the storm was past, and saw nobody. She, too, heard a voice, and it told her that till the day when she could kiss her sister her home should be in the ocean. And when she opened her eyes again she saw nothing but the deep blue sea tossing gently around her as she floated on it, and throwing little splashes of spray on her beautiful face.
Yes, she had been turned into a Nymph. Her face was as beautiful as could be, and her long golden hair, spread out over the waves as they rose and fell, was dazzling with its beauty in the sun-light — but below she was like a fish, with shining green scales. The Nymph was very sad at first, and she could never be quite happy when she remembered why she was there. But she soon made friends with the queer creatures that live in the sea, and the stupidest fishes soon knew that it was worth their while to make friends with her. The dainty little argonauts, with their pink shells floating about on the top of the clear water and their long graceful arms waving over the sides, were always with her in shoals, and wherever she went the water round her looked quite pink with them. The goggle-eyed codfish and the handsome silver salmon, the little red and blue and green and yellow fish all head and spikes, the long wriggling sea-snake and the greedy shark with his six rows of terrible teeth, even the huge soft black whale and his deadly enemy the sword-fish — they all used to come together and listen to the Nymph's wonderful songs, just as the birds and beasts listened to the songs of the Dryad.
There were the mermaids, too, who were very beautiful and had fishes' tails just like the Nymph, but were not very wise, and could never imagine that anybody could want a better place to live in than the sea. They were always very fond of listening to her songs, and once she told them her whole story ; how she had been a fairy once and would be a fairy again when she had kissed the Dryad. But they had never been fairies and were never likely to be, so far as they knew, and they didn't know at all what she meant.
The Nymph could not help being sad sometimes for want of somebody to speak to that would understand her. Sometimes when she was asleep and rocking gently on the little waves, for there were never any big waves where she was, she would wake up with a start, because she fancied that the breeze was moaning through many tree-tops close beside her. But it was only the wind whistling through the shrouds of a great ship as it ploughed its way through the sea. The sailors — for men had now been on the earth a long time — used to look over the side of the ship and see the fish leaping out of the water and chasing each other round something white that was floating in the moon- light, and they only thought as they passed that some poor woman had been drowned.
This went on for hundreds and hundreds of years — the Dryad living in the oak-tree, loving the birds and the beasts, and being loved by them in return ; the Nymph living in the ocean, loving all the queer sea creatures, and all of them loving her. And still the ocean rolled for the Nymph, but she never heard the wind among the tree-tops; and still the wind moaned among the leaves for the Dryad, but she never heard the waves come rolling on the shore.
One night, however, the Nymph discovered that the ocean was moving westward, for the stars above her were not the stars she had seen the night before. On and on the ocean carried her, steadily and not slowly, ever forward to the land.
And one day the Dryad found that the oak-tree was growing old and losing his branches, and his trunk was getting quite hollow ; and she began to be afraid that the tree would die, and she die with the tree ; but whenever that idea came into her head she remembered that she was one day to become a fairy again, and if the tree was not to last much longer it only meant that that day was to come the sooner ; so she waited as patiently as she could.
Not long after this, on Christmas Eve, all the animals she knew came to the tree as usual, and after she had sung to them they did not go away, but stood there looking at each other as if they wanted to say some- thing but hardly liked to. She asked them then if they wanted anything else of her ; and they looked still more anxious, and the birds poked their heads under their wings again and again, and the squirrels kept brushing away at their eyes with their tails. At last a great lion stepped forward and spoke out. He said that the sea was coming up through the forest, driving all the animals farther and farther back, and they were very anxious to know what would become of their queen in the old oak-tree.
The animals were much surprised when the Dryad's face grew as bright and cheerful as the face of the sun itself. Then she told them that as soon as the sea did come she would leave the old oak-tree and go right up to one of the stars that were looking down on them with merry eyes from blue heaven, and be turned into a fairy. They did not know what she meant by that exactly, but they quite understood that she was going away from them, and they were still very sorrowful. She comforted them as well as she could, and told them that perhaps some of the fairies would be allowed to come down and help them as they used to help the animals that lived hundreds of years before. After this the Dryad went to sleep for a little while, but none of the animals or birds left the tree, and none of them slept.
A little before midnight the Dryad awoke. This time she was quite sure that she heard the sound of the sea. It was coming through the trees, dancing quickly over the mossy roots. Nearer and nearer it came, till the Dryad seemed to feel that the Nymph she had so long been waiting for was coming at last, and she burst out into a song : —
"Bubbling and rushing, swirling and gushing —
That's not the wind as it moans through the trees !
Splashing and rumbling, dashing and tumbling —
The herald of Ocean is riding the breeze.
" Speak to me, fairy dear ! I can the billows hear
Coming to join us, who never will part.
Kiss me with melody ; fairy song sing to me;
Soon with the lip we’ll kiss, — now, with the heart.”
Hardly had the Dryad finished when she heard, at first very faintly but growing louder and louder all the time, the familiar voice of her old friend, singing some- thing like this : —
"Sweet are the notes that come
Out from the leafy shade —
Sweeter, the face that is hidden from me.
Haste me to answer, then.
Sweetly, the fairy maid
Singing, the queen of the birds in the tree.
" Yes, it's your fairy friend —
Parted so long ago —
Riding on Ocean's back freedom to gain.
White-maned sea-horses, go
Quick to the happy end, —
End of our parting and end of our pain."
Yes, now the first ripples were washing the roots of the great gnarled oak. Higher and higher came the water, and there at last were the Nymph and the Dryad face to face. The animals had retreated to a hillock behind the tree, and were watching and listening with all their eyes and ears. Higher and higher came the water, and higher still, till the huge old trunk was covered. It was midnight now, and as Christmas Day began the Nymph leapt in among the branches, caught the Dryad in her arms, and kissed her.
"Where are we?'' said both together when they looked up.
They were on a beautiful star, far away up in the sky. Thousands of fairies were crowding around two whose faces were the faces of the Nymph and the Dryad — but they too were fairies now, and they kept that Christmas as all good cheerful fairies should. They were never anything else but fairies after that, you may be sure. They never forgot the old days, though, and in a little time they came back to the earth with a great many other fairies, and helped the animals and flowers and men to do everything they ought to do, and to be everything they ought to be. But these two particular fairies kept a special look-out for people who quarrelled. And if such people think they hear somebody whispering to them, and if they afterwards find that they cannot get anybody to speak to them, perhaps they will remember the story of the Nymph and the Dryad. And if these people have a little wisdom left after the quarrel, they will behave so well to animals and birds and fishes that some day or other they will be given the chance of behaving well to other people again.
The old oak was nearly all gone when the two fairies went there together, but before he died he had dropped an acorn inside his hollow trunk, and there was now a young stripling of an oak-tree growing up just where his father lived before him.
But there is no Dryad in that oak-tree yet.