The story of Melissanthi
Hello, my name is Nikita.
Did I tell you I was a bee? Yes, I am a small bee and I live with my family on a high mountain, Psiloritis. I really like here, I play with flowers all day and here it has a lot with wonderful colors and different scents that make people smell.
In winter I sit inside the hive, because it is cold and snowy outside and I really like hearing stories from my grandmother Dimitra that I love so much. She tells the most beautiful stories, since everyone calls her a beekeeper.
So I decided to tell you a story, my favorite. My grandmother says it's real. Well, sit back and listen carefully.
Once upon a time, many years ago, here in this area, in the area of ancient Eleftherna, many important people lived. They had beautiful houses and temples, made beautiful statues and jewelry and enjoyed every day nature around them with waters and streams, with many trees and high mountains. My ancestors, the bees, lived there with them. They worked non-stop all day without complaining at all, they carried the pollen from flower to flower and from tree to tree, they made honey, candle, royal jelly, propolis, all the good that a bee does. My grandmother says that honey was the sweetest and most delicious honey that man has ever tasted and let me tell you ... I believe it.
So there lived a woman, who was very concerned with these bees and whose name I will not tell you yet. That woman was very beautiful, with big eyes that shone in the sun and long black hair full of curls. She used to wear Cretan clothing every day with a beautiful outfit, you know like a scarf, which gently covered both her shoulders, a wide metal belt and a long skirt adorned with colored squares. She was the priestess of the temple of the god Apollo, who was the god of the sun and was also the protector of the bees that she cared for near the temple, that is, of my ancestors.
The god Apollo, because he loved her for her kindness, gave her a necklace with beads reminiscent of flowers. And it was a gold, one of ebony, one gold, one of ebony to remind me of a bee and of course the name of Melissanthi. Everyone in ancient Eleftherna liked her very much because she was always smiling, kind-hearted with a good conversation about everyone. After all, apart from the inhabitants, the travelers who went to Knossos or Kydonia also went to meet her.
Everyone went there, prayed in the temple and asked Melissanthi to advise them about their lives. She was preparing the altar to perform her sacred ceremony, offering honey, wine, fruit and nuts to the god Apollo and asking him in turn to send good and peaceful days to the place and to the people, so that they may prosper and prosper. Then he sprinkled them all with honey and they all left happy and optimistic. The rest of her time Melissanthi took care of her flowers and took care of the bees.
Everything was going well, until that day came. A day when from dawn the sky was still filled with black, menacing, dense clouds, that not a single ray of the sun could penetrate. It started to blow furiously and it was raining profusely. Melissanthi, seeing this crowd, without a second thought, ran to protect the bees.
Only after he covered and protected all the hives and saw that the bees would be safe did he start going back to the temple. Then a loud thunder was heard. The sky lit up from end to end and a thunderbolt landed on Melissanthi. The god Apollo, seeing the evil that happened, took Melissanthi in his hands and after giving her eternal life, transformed her into a bee, so that she could stay forever in the temple, in the Free company with the bees.
People recognized her the other day among the other bees from the necklace she was still wearing, though smaller now. Then they prepared altars outside the temple to thank Apollo and made jewelry in her honor that depicted Melissanthi, on one side you saw a lily, a flower and when you turned it upside down you saw the goddess bee.
It was the first time in human history that the bee was depicted as a goddess. Others say that they made a small statue in its form that later reached far away, in France. But Grandma says this is another story I might tell you another time.
Where history becomes a myth and myth becomes a fairy tale ... The story of Melissanthi. It is a fairy tale by Myrto Petropoulou.
