The story of echo is a pretty sad one actually, its about love and the loss of love which is a common theme for a lot of Greek myths. The loss of a loved one as a driving force for a characters actions is found in almost every story from Macbeth to Disney. In echos case instead of actions to change her life she just gets sad and dies but that´s a spoiler for this story.

Once upon a time there was a nymph named Echo, she was very favored by the other nymphs because she could tell stories like no other. Echo could talk for hours about the tinniest thing with no hesitation. one day the king of the gods Zeus was getting frisky with some of the other nymphs. the other nymphs had put echo on guard duty in case Zeus´s wife, Hera came looking for him then low and behold Hera went searching. When Hera came upon the nymphs abode she ran into echo as planned. with this echo started asking Hera question after question but never letting her get a word in. For hours this went on, echo would ask a question then when Hera would open her mouth to answer echo would asked her another even stupider question. This left room for Zeus to make his grand escape therefor angering Hera. Hera then turned to echo and said “you will be curses to never say another world unless someone has spoken it before you”.

Echo was forced to walk the earth alone saying nothing until one day she spotted a handsome hunter shooting game in the woods. He was the prettiest thing she had ever seen in her whole life. This hunters name was Narcissus and he had a reputation for rejecting any woman that asked to marry him. He had yet to find anyone that was beautiful enough for him to even consider marrying. As he hunted Echo watched him through the brush without a word. Narcissus soon stumbled upon a deep blue pond and peered into its water, in the pools water he saw the prettiest thing he´d ever seen. He stared enamored with the gorgeous figure he saw. He whispered sweet nothings to the reflection and was delighted to find it said the same things back to him. In fact it wasn’t his reflection speaking it was echo still in the brush telling him how much she loved him using his own words. when Narcissus tried touching the beautiful figure it disappeared. so distraught over losing the beautiful creature he dove into the water and drowned.

Echo was so sorrowful that she wandered the earth alone again for centuries, her body slowly degrading over time leaving only her voice. They say that she still roams the hills and mountains of Greece and when you yell something trough their peaks you´ll hear echo returning what you said to her back to you.

What did you think of this myth? Do you think that Narcissus wasn’t really as narcissistic as we think, he was just gay and it was his first time seeing a hot guy? Please let me know what you thought of this story!