Brazilian Myth: Yara/Lara.

 

Lara..

Mãe das Águas 

 mother of the waters

Lara also Know as the “Lady of the Waters, or Mother of the waters” is most often depicted as an attractive yet very  dangerous  and seductive mermaid-like cryptid from Brazil.

She lives in the rivers and lagoons, where she sings her haunting songs to attract the local fisherman  using her beautiful voice and good looks to call them to their deaths, similar to Greek sirens.

 with the combined beauty of her voice and seductive figure she easily lures  men into the water where they seldom return. The few that do manage to escape her are haunted by her otherworldly songs for the rest of their life often driven to madness.

 In most  versions of this myth she lures men who fell under her spell into the water to drown them.

In other variants her spell  would compel him to simply leave everything he had  behind and live with her underwater forever because of her beauty ...though in this kinder version she is  said to be a very loving and attentive wife and would love him for  the rest of his life.

However she is   immortal and will spend most of eternity alone. (Humans only live so long).

In yet another versions  

She was a beautiful young warrior-woman, skilled in combat and the art of  war though she lives  in a patriarchal tribe, she eventually gained the admiration of the entire tribe and even her father the chief respected her ability, however her brothers grew jealous of her and  decided to murder her during the night. 

According to this version she defended herself from her brother's and accidentally killed them in the process upon discovering he's sons dead , her father became furious at her.

 She fled to the jungle  but was eventually captured and punished for her brothers death's, by being drowned in the river.

 A different ending to this version  claims the brothers  killed her the nigh of the attack and dumped her body in the river then  blamed the night goddess, Jaci, for her disappearance.

In both versions she ends up in the river, And is turned into a mermaid   by the nearby fish on the night of a full moon or by Jaci.

Now  she takes her revenge on all men by seducing them and drowning them in the river.

Some claim even being near her territory is enough to drive a man crazy and make him want to enter the water.

The Naiad; Water Nymph

                                                                      Naiad


The Greek word is Ναϊάς  Naiás, pronounced na͜a.i.ás, plural Ναϊάδες  Naiades,  (na͜a.i.ád.es) It derives from νάειν (náein), "to flow", or νᾶμα (nãma), "running water". "Naiad" has several English pronunciations.. ˈneɪæd neɪəd,  naɪæd, naɪəd.

In Greek mythology, the Naiads (Ancient Greek: Ναϊάδες) were a type of water nymph (female spirit) who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks and other bodies of fresh water.  They are distinct from river gods, who embodied rivers, and the very ancient spirits that inhabited the still waters of marshes, ponds and lagoon-lakes, such as pre-Mycenaean Lerna in the Argolid.

Naiads were associated with fresh water, as the (Oceanids) were with saltwater and the Nereids specifically with the Mediterranean, but because the Greeks thought of the world's waters as all one system, which percolated in from the sea in deep cavernous spaces within the earth, there was some overlap. Arethusa, the nymph of a spring, could make her way through subterranean flows from the Peloponnesus, to surface on the island of Sicily.

                                               It is considered a bad omen to capture a naiad

They were often the object of archaic local cults, worshiped as essential to humans. Boys and girls at coming-of-age ceremonies dedicated their childish locks to the local naiad of the spring. In places like Lerna their waters' ritual cleansing were credited with magical medical properties. Animals were ritually drowned there. Oracles might be situated by ancient springs.

Naiads could also be dangerous,  Hylas of the Argo's crew was lost when he was taken by naiads fascinated by his beauty...

 The naiads were also known to exhibit jealous tendencies. Theocritus' story of naiad jealousy was that of a shepherd, Daphnis, who was the lover of Nomia or Echenais; Daphnis had on several occasions been unfaithful to Nomia and as revenge she permanently blinded him. Salmacis forced the youth Hermaphroditus into a carnal embrace and, when he sought to get away, fused with him.  The water nymph associated with particular springs was known all through Europe in places with no direct connection with Greece, surviving in the Celtic wells of northwest Europe that have been rededicated to Saints, and in the medieval Melusine.

Walter Burkert points out, "When in the Iliad  Zeus calls the gods into assembly on Mount Olympus, it is not only the well-known Olympians who come along, but also all the nymphs and all the rivers; Okeanos alone remains at his station  hearers recognized this impossibility as the poet's hyperbole, which proclaimed the universal power of Zeus over the ancient natural world: "the worship of these deities," Burkert confirms, "is limited only by the fact that they are inseparably identified with a specific locality.


In another legend a mythic king is credited with marrying a naiad and founding a city: it was the newly arrived Hellenes justifying their presence. The loves and rapes of Zeus, according to Graves' readings, record the supplanting of ancient local cults by Olympian ones (Graves 1955, passim). Fountain of the Naiads, Piazza della Repubblica, Rome, Italy  So, in the back-story of the myth of Aristaeus, Hypseus, a king of the Lapiths, married Chlidanope, a naiad, who bore him Cyrene.

 Aristaeus had more than ordinary mortal experience with the naiads: when his bees died in Thessaly, he went to consult them. His aunt Arethusa invited him below the water's surface, where he was washed with water from a perpetual spring and given advice.   

St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans was formerly known as Nyades Street, and is parallel to Dryades Street.       

                                              Gioacchino Pagliei The Naiads 1881




Types of Naiad
 
Crinaeae (fountains)   
Eleionomae (marshes)   
Limnades or Limnatides (lakes)   
Pegaeae (springs)   
Potameides (rivers) 

Diferent kinds of Nymph         
Alseid   
Auloniad   
Aurai   
Crinaeae   
Dryads   
Eleionomae   
Hamadryads   
Hesperides   
Limnades   
Lampads   
Meliae.   
Naiads   
Napaeae   
Nereids   
Oceanids   
Oreads   
Pegaeae   
Pegasides   
Pleiades   
Potamides  
  

Other Water Types  
   
Camenae   
The Lady of the Lake   
Melusine   
Mermaid   
Nix   
Ondine   
Rusalka   
Siren