A FORGOTTEN CLASSICAL MYTH

I was going to post about this topic along with the Fourth Story of The Snow Queen, since this is a story very like that of the Clever Princess, and I discovered both tales at the same time: one of them, from a book of adapted Andersen tales... the other one... from a Genesis song!!
The 70s quintet was inspired to adapt this story from Book IV of Ovid's Metamorphoses into a song, that has become part of my life's soundtrack. This is the story of one of the most unsung bastards ever descended from classical deities, and that of a freshwater nymph waaaay ahead of her times.
This version combines the lyrics with a seventeenth-century translation of the story told by Ovid:

The Fountain Of Salmacis

The Naiads nurst an infant heretofore,
That Cytherea once to Hermes bore:
From both th' illustrious authors of his race
The child was nam'd, nor was it hard to trace
Both the bright parents thro' the infant's face.

From a dense forest of tall, dark, pinewood,
Mount Ida rises like an island.
Within a hidden cave, nymphs had kept a child;
Hermaphroditus, son of gods,
so afraid of their love.

When fifteen years in Ida's cool retreat
The boy had told, he left his native seat,
And sought fresh fountains in a foreign soil...

As the dawn creeps up the sky
The hunter caught sight of a doe.
In desire for conquest,
He found himself, within a glade
he'd not beheld before.

Hermaphroditus: “Where are you my father.
Give wisdom to your son.”
Narrator: “Then he could go no farther.
Now lost, the boy was guided by the sun”

And as his strength began to fail
He saw a shimmering lake.

It shew'd the bottom in a fairer light,
Nor kept a sand conceal'd from human sight.
The stream produc'd nor slimy ooze, nor weeds,
Nor miry rushes, nor the spiky reeds;
But dealt enriching moisture all around,
The fruitful banks with chearful verdure crown'd,
And kept the spring eternal on the ground.

A shadow in the dark green depths

Disturbed the strange tranquility.

A nymph presides, not practis'd in the chase,
Nor skilful at the bow, nor at the race;

Her sisters often, as 'tis said, wou'd cry,
"Fie Salmacis: what, always idle! fie.
Or take thy quiver, or thy arrows seize,
And mix the toils of hunting with thy ease."
Nor quiver she nor arrows e'er wou'd seize,
Nor mix the toils of hunting with her ease.
But oft would bathe her in the chrystal tide,
Oft with a comb her dewy locks divide;
Now in the limpid streams she views her face,
And drest her image in the floating glass:
On beds of leaves she now repos'd her limbs,
Now gather'd flow'rs that grew about her streams,

Salmacis: “The waters are disturbed

Some creature has been stirred”
Narrator: “The waters are disturbed
The naiad queen Salmacis has been…
stirred”

As he rushed to quench his thirst,
A fountain spring appeared before him
And as his heated breath
brushed through the cool mist,
A liquid voice called “Son of gods,
drink from my spring”.

The water tasted strangely sweet.
Behind him the voice called again.
He turned and saw her, in a cloak of mist alone
And as he gazed, her eyes were filled
with the darkness of the lake.

Salmacis: “We shall be one.
We shall be joined as one”

"Bright youth," she cries, "whom all thy features prove
A God, and, if a God, the God of love;

Blest are thy parents, and thy sisters blest:

But oh how blest! how more than blest thy bride,

Ally'd in bliss, if any yet ally'd.

If so, let mine the stol'n enjoyments be;

If not, behold a willing bride in me!"

Narrator: “She wanted them as one.

Yet he had no desire to be one”

The boy knew nought of love, and toucht with shame,
He strove, and blusht, but still the blush became:
In rising blushes still fresh beauties rose;
The sunny side of fruit such blushes shows,
And such the moon, when all her silver white
Turns in eclipses to a ruddy light.
The nymph still begs, if not a nobler bliss,
A cold salute at least, a sister's kiss:
And now prepares to take the lovely boy
Between her arms. He, innocently coy,
Replies, "Or leave me to my self alone,
You rude uncivil nymph, or I'll be gone."
"Fair stranger then," says she, "it shall be so";
And, for she fear'd his threats, she feign'd to go:
But hid within a covert's neighbouring green,
She kept him still in sight, herself unseen.
The boy now fancies all the danger o'er,
And innocently sports about the shore,
Playful and wanton to the stream he trips,
And dips his foot, and shivers as he dips.
The coolness pleas'd him, and with eager haste
His airy garments on the banks he cast;
His godlike features, and his heav'nly hue,
And all his beauties were expos'd to view.
His naked limbs the nymph with rapture spies,
While hotter passions in her bosom rise,
Flush in her cheeks, and sparkle in her eyes.
She longs, she burns to clasp him in her arms,
And looks, and sighs, and kindles at his charms.

Now all undresssed upon the banks he stood,
And clapt his sides, and leapt into the flood:
His lovely limbs the silver waves divide,
His limbs appear more lovely through the tide;
As lilies shut within a crystal case
Receive a glossy lustre from the glass.
He's mine, he's all my own, the Naiad cries,
And flings off all, and after him she flies.
And now she fastens on him as he swims,
And holds him close, and wraps about his limbs.
The more the boy resisted, and was coy,
The more she clipt, and kissed the struggling boy.

Hermaphroditus: “Away from me 

cold-blooded woman. Your thirst is not mine”

Salmacis: “Nothing will cause us to part

Hear me O gods”

The restless boy still obstinately strove
To free himself, and still refus'd her love.
Amidst his limbs she kept her limbs entwined,
"And why, coy youth," she cries, "why thus unkind!
Oh may the Gods thus keep us ever joined!
Oh may we never, never part again!"

Unearthly calm descended from the sky
And then their flesh and bones
were strangely merged
Forever to be joined as one.

For now she finds him, as his limbs she prest,
Grow nearer still, and nearer to her breast;
'Till, piercing each the other's flesh, they run
Together, and incorporate in one:
Last in one face are both their faces join'd,
As when the stock and grafted twig combin'd
Shoot up the same, and wear a common rind.

The creature crawled into the lake
A fading voice was heard:
“And I beg, that all who touch this spring
may share my fate”

(He prayed, but wonder'd at his softer tone,
Surprised to hear a voice but half his own.)
You parent-gods, whose heav'nly names I bear,
Hear your Hermaphroditus, grant my prayer;
Oh grant, that whomsoe'er these streams contain,
If man he enter'd, he may rise again
Supple, unsinew'd, and but half a man!

The heav'nly parents answer'd from on high,
Their two-shaped son, the double votary,
Then gave a secret virtue to the flood,
And tinged its source to make his wishes good.

Salmacis: “We are the one, we are the one”
Narrator: “The two are now made one.
Demi-god and nymph are now made one”

Both had given everything they had.
A lover's dream had been fulfilled at last,
Forever still beneath the lake.

Now here comes some artwork based upon the little-known myth:

 

Did you know? The Rare Facts Section of the post

1. The Salmacis legend inspired The Ringstetten Saga! It's even told outright, as a tutor's lesson and as a campfire tale. But a more subtle touch may be the enchantment of Gustav Adolf after drinking from that clingy Ellewoman's spring! That Ellewoman, obsessed with the Carolean since he was a newborn child, and not that willing to relinquish him at all!
2. When I first heard the Genesis song, I learned a new classical myth that I didn't know before! I thought it was a secret, but it turned out that there are more people who know it!
3. When I first heard the Genesis song, there was a word neither Dad nor I knew that we had to look up in our Swedish-English dictionary. It was the first time in my life I looked up a word: the verb "to quench", which still speaks of inquiry to me (but they'll never quench my thirst for knowledge).
4. Another powerful female that Genesis introduced me to was Lilith, the zeroth woman (look up "Lilywhite Lilith" on YouTube).
5. My obsession with Hermaphroditus and Salmacis took place from my 11th year of age to the 15th, during all of my puberty, until I had started bleeding. Then, I had discovered Othello in a reader in a local bookshop... Was all of that by chance?
6. But, until then, I thought every lake and pond in Sweden could be the haunt of an undine or an ellewoman, Norse counterparts to the nymphs of the Mediterranean. Even the pond on the hill above Nan's place. That pond I mentioned in my Shakespeare Day story. I had been scared off, like generations of Dermark children before me, with the tale of a lone wolf stalking on that wooded hill. But, upon reaching my teens, I started to walk up the hill and around the pond, looking for berries and chanterelles. And even trying to pick "nix-roses", as lily pads and brandy bottles are called in Sweden. These experiences and a little Norse folklore, combined with the Hermaphroditus legend, the Fourth Story of Andersen's Snow Queen (specifically, the Clever Princess character) and later influences from Othello (an outpost thriller that just screams of passion and of military life), with the discoveries I made while exploring my other country's history (I was and am particularly fascinated with Sweden's royals and the battles they fought), and with the elongated shadow of magical-realistic family sagas like 100 Years of Solitude or the more Nordic Surgeon's Stories by Topelius... provided the foundations of The Ringstetten Saga.