Daphne curse made by the god Cupid, son of Venus, on the god Apollo (Phoebus), she became the unwilling object of the infatuation of Apollo, who chased her against his wish. Just before being overtaken by him, Daphne pleaded to her rivergod father for help, who transformed her into a laurel tree, thus foiling Apollo. Thenceforth Apollo developed a special reverence for laurel. At the Pythian Games which were held every four years in Delphi in honour of Apollo, a wreath of laurel gathered from the Vale of Tempe in Thessaly was given as a prize. Hence it later became customary
The Wood Nymph to be "really a tone painter and poet" in the mold of the symphonic poems of Liszt. In "The Wood Nymph", Sibelius adheres closely to the narrative structure of Rydberg's poem, so much so that at the 1895 premiere, audience members were provided with copies of the source material, indicating the centrality of Rydberg's plot to the performance. Due to its programmatic qualities, musicologists commonly describe "The Wood Nymph", although in one movement, as consisting of four informal sections or "dramatic "tableaux"", each of which corresponds to one of the poem's four stanzas: Björn, "a tall and handsome lad", is