Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Homeric Hymn 26 sings Dionysus of the ivy-wreath, loud-crying Zeus’s glorious son, whom they reared as he grew in the fragrant caves of Nysa after the nymphs received him from Zeus’s hands. The nymphs nurse him through the hollows; he wanders the wooded valleys crowned with ivy and laurel; the hymn asks him to grant happiness as the singers remember him in the seasons. This is not the pirate-dolphin narrative (Hymn 7) nor the Semele–thigh birth tale, but a compact Nysean rearing hymn. Catalogue it as the Dionysus short-hymn atom of nurses and ivy, complementary to the longer mythic cycles.