The gate of the year

Among the Tree Nymphs, those associated with the ash tree were called Meliae. According to mythology, they had been generated by the Earth, Gaia, fertilized by Uranus’s blood, who had been emasculated by his son Cronus (Hesiod, Theogony, 185-187). Hesiod reports a tradition according to which the generation of the men of bronze, that were the precursors of actual mankind, was made of beings born from the ash trees (or from the ash-tree Nymphs) (Hesiod, Works and Days, 143-145). On the other hand, the Nymph Melia, the first of the Ash Nymphs, was regarded as the mother of Phoroneus, a primordial man who was the first king of Argos. These traditions find a parallel in Germanic mythology, where the Ash-Tree Yggdrasil was regarded as the World Tree, the axis uniting the Underworld, the Earth and the Sky. In the Norse tradition, too, the first man, Ask, took his name from the ash-tree (Lindow 2001).
The Meliae Nymphs, among the various varieties of ash-tree, were in particular associated with the manna ash (Fraxinus ornus), which produces a sugary substance, properly called “manna”, still nowadays employed for officinal and medicinal usages (Figure on the right).

[Source: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_%28gastronomia%29]




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Among the Tree Nymphs, those associated with the ash tree were called Meliae. According to mythology, they had been generated by the Earth, Gaia, fertilized by Uranus’s blood, who had been emasculated by his son Cronus (Hesiod, Theogony, 185-187). Hesiod reports a tradition according to which the generation of the men of bronze, that were the precursors of actual mankind, was made of beings born from the ash trees (or from the ash-tree Nymphs) (Hesiod, Works and Days, 143-145). On the other hand, the Nymph Melia, the first of the Ash Nymphs, was regarded as the mother of Phoroneus, a primordial man who was the first king of Argos. These traditions find a parallel in Germanic mythology, where the Ash-Tree Yggdrasil was regarded as the World Tree, the axis uniting the Underworld, the Earth and the Sky. In the Norse tradition, too, the first man, Ask, took his name from the ash-tree (Lindow 2001). The Meliae Nymphs, among the various varieties of ash-tree, were in particular associated with the manna ash (Fraxinus ornus), which produces a sugary substance, properly called “manna”, still nowadays employed for officinal and medicinal usages (Figure on the right). [Source: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_%28gastronomia%29]