Daphne Roman poet Ovid does a retelling of this Greek legend, which appears in his work Metamorphoses. The pursuit of a local nymph by an Olympian god, part of the archaic adjustment of religious cult in Greece, was given an arch anecdotal turn in the "Metamorphoses" by the Roman poet Ovid (died AD 17). According to this version Apollo's infatuation was caused by a golden-tipped arrow shot at him by Cupid, son of Venus, who wanted to punish Apollo for having insulted his archery skills by commenting "What hast thou to do with the arms of men, thou wanton boy?", and
The Wood Nymph have failed to prepare "The Wood Nymph" for publication is a question that has perplexed scholars. On the advice of Ferruccio Busoni, Sibelius in 1895 offered "The Wood Nymph" to the Russian music publisher Mitrofan Belyayev but it was not published. Murtomäki has suggested that Sibelius, despite having been fond of "The Wood Nymph", was "unsure about the true value" of his output from the 1890s, an ambivalence that is perhaps best illustrated by the piecemeal publication history of, and multiple revisions to, the four "Lemminkäinen" legends (appearing in the composer's 1911 diary under a list of works to be