son. Hours and hours he would spend sitting beside
her or watching her while she arrayed herself in white or in brightly
colored garments. Not to the chase and not into the fields did Jason
go, nor did he ever go with the others into the Lemnian land; all day
he sat in the palace with her, watching her, or listening to her
singing, or to the long, fierce speeches that she used to make to her
nurse or to the four maidens who attended her.

In the evening they would gather in the hall of the palace, the
Argonauts and the Lemnian maidens who were their comrades. There were
dances, and always Jason and Hypsipyle danced together. All the Lemnian
maidens sang beautifully, but none of them had any stories to tell.

And when the Argonauts would have stories told, the Lemnian maidens
would forbid any tale that was about a god or a hero; only stories that
were about the goddesses or about some maiden would they let be told.

Orpheus, who knew the histories of the gods, would have told them many
stories, but the only story of his that they would come from the dance
to listen to was a story of the goddesses, of Demeter and her daughter
Persephone.

Demeter And Persephone

I

Once when Demeter was going through the world, giving men grain to be
sown in their fields, she heard a cry that came to her from across high
mountains and that mounted up to her from the sea. Demeter's heart
shook when she heard that cry, for she knew that it came to her from
her daughter, from her only child, young Persephone.

She stayed not to bless the fields in which the grain was being sown,
but she hurried, hurried away, to Sicily and to the fields of Enna,
where she had left Persephone. All Enna she searched, and all Sicily,
but she found no trace of Persephone, nor of the maidens whom
Persephone had been playing with. From all whom she met she begged for
tidings, but although some had seen maidens gathering flowers and
playing together, no one could tell Demeter why her child had cried out
nor where she had since gone to.

There were some who could have told her. One was Cyane, a water nymph.
But Cyane, before Demeter came to her, had been changed into a spring
of water. And now, not being able to speak and tell Demeter where her
child had gone to and who had carried her away, she showed in the water
the girdle of Persephone that she had caught in her hands. And Demeter,
finding the girdle of her child in the spring, knew that she had bee