Once upon a time the earth was so very young and the people upon it so pure and good that they could hear the morning stars as they sang together. It was during the Golden Age, as it is now called, that one morning in the early springtime a little group of girls were playing together and gathering wild flowers.
One of these girls was named Proserpina. She was the merriest of them all, though her dress was of the plainest brown. Her little feet danced everywhere and her little fingers seemed to touch the flowers as lightly as the butterfly that flitted by her.
Carelessly she danced close to a great opening in the ground. Looking down she saw a yellow daffodil growing on the edge. Leaning over to pick it, she felt herself caught by her dress, and the next minute found herself sailing far down into the earth through the great crevice. She was in a chariot drawn by black horses, which were driven by a driver who seemed to be both deaf and dumb. He neither answered when she pleaded with him to take her back, nor even seemed to hear her.
The girls who were left gathering wild flowers had missed Proserpina almost the moment she was out of sight, but no one knew what had happened.
"Come back! come back!" the girls called, but no answer came up from the great opening or from the forest near them. Only Echo marked their cry of "Proserpina, oh, Proserpina, come back!" "She has vanished," the girls whispered. "I always felt as though she had wings beneath that plain brown dress she wore," said one.
"But who can tell Queen Ceres, her mother?" they asked one another.
No one could go alone, so they all went together to Queen Ceres and told her what had happened.
The good queen wept bitterly. That day she laid aside her regal robes and began her search for Proserpina. Up and down the world went this royal mother seeking for her lost daughter. At last she came to the land of King Celeus. When Ceres reached his land she was so ragged and poor that she was glad to earn money by taking care of the king's baby son. As nurse to the little prince, Queen Ceres was almost comforted.
Because she was the goddess of the wheat and the fruits, the crops upon the land of King Celeus, while she was there, were very wonderful. In the land near Mount Aetna, where Proserpina had been lost, no rain fell and no corn nor apples grew.