MYTH

Icarus and
Daedalus
retold by
Josephine Preston Peabody

About the Author

Josephine Preston Peabody (1874–1922) was an American poet and
dramatist born in Brooklyn, New York. Peabody was educated at the Girls’
Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe College. Her first published work was
a poem that appeared in the Woman’s Journal in 1888, when she was
14 years old; she went on to write verse dramas and poems to wide
critical acclaim.

BACKGROUND
In ancient Greece, stories about gods, goddesses, heroes, and monsters
were interwoven into the fabric of everyday life. These myths explained
everything from death to the weather, and gave meaning to the world
and its mysterious workings. They were part of an oral tradition;
there is no “original text” introducing the characters. Listeners and
readers, having heard these myths all their lives, would not need such
information.
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A mong all those mortals who grew so wise that they

learned the secrets of the gods, none was more cunning1
than Daedalus.
NOTES

2 He once built, for King Minos of Crete,2 a wonderful labyrinth3

of winding ways so cunningly tangled up and twisted around
that, once inside, you could never find your way out again
without a magic clue. But the king’s favor veered4 with the
wind, and one day he had his master architect imprisoned in a
tower. Daedalus managed to escape from his cell; but it seemed

1. cunning adj. skillful; clever.

2. King Minos (MEE nuhs) of Crete (kreet) King Minos was a son of the god Zeus. Crete is
a Greek island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
3. labyrinth (LAB uh rihnth) n. maze.
4. veered v. changed directions.

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 impossible to leave the island, since every ship that came or went
NOTES was well guarded by order of the king.
3 At length, watching the seagulls in the air—the only creatures
that were sure of liberty—he thought of a plan for himself and his
young son Icarus, who was captive with him.
4 Little by little, he gathered a store of feathers great and small.
He fastened these together with thread, molded them in with wax,
and so fashioned two great wings like those of a bird. When they
were done, Daedalus fitted them to his own shoulders, and after
one or two efforts, he found that by waving his arms he could
winnow5 the air and cleave it, as a swimmer does the sea. He held
himself aloft, wavered this way and that with the wind, and at
last, like a great fledgling,6 he learned to fly.
5 Without delay, he fell to work on a pair of wings for the boy
Icarus, and taught him carefully how to use them, bidding him
beware of rash adventures among the stars. “Remember,” said the
father, “never to fly very low or very high, for the fogs about the
earth would weigh you down, but the blaze of the sun will surely
melt your feathers apart if you go too near.”
6 For Icarus, these cautions went in at one ear and out by the
other. Who could remember to be careful when he was to fly
for the first time? Are birds careful? Not they! And not an idea
remained in the boy’s head but the one joy of escape.
7 The day came, and the fair wind that was to set them free. The
father bird put on his wings, and, while the light urged them to
be gone, he waited to see that all was well with Icarus, for the two
could not fly hand in hand. Up they rose, the boy after his father.
The hateful ground of Crete sank beneath them; and the country
folk, who caught a glimpse of them when they were high above
the treetops, took it for a vision of the gods—Apollo,7 perhaps,
with Cupid8 after him.
8 At first there was a terror in the joy. The wide vacancy of the air

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dazed them— a glance downward made their brains reel.
9 But when a great wind filled their wings, and Icarus felt himself
sustained, like a halcyon-bird9 in the hollow of a wave, like a child
uplifted by his mother, he forgot everything in the world but joy.
He forgot Crete and the other islands that he had passed over:
he saw but vaguely that winged thing in the distance before him
that was his father Daedalus. He longed for one draft of flight to
quench the thirst of his captivity: he stretched out his arms to the
sky and made towards the highest heavens.

5. winnow v. to blow away, by making an air current.

6. fledgling n. young bird.
7. Apollo (uh POL oh) Greek god of music, poetry, and medicine; identified with the sun.
8. Cupid in Roman mythology, the god of love, son of Venus.
9. halcyon (HAL see uhn) bird legendary sea bird, which the ancient Greeks believed could
calm the sea by nesting on it

IL15 UNIT 5 Independent Learning • Icarus and Daedalus

 10 Alas for him! Warmer and warmer grew the air. Those arms,
that had seemed to uphold him, relaxed. His wings wavered, NOTES

drooped. He fluttered his young hands vainly—he was falling—

and in that terror he remembered. The heat of the sun had melted
the wax from his wings; the feathers were falling, one by one, like
snowflakes; and there was none to help.
11 He fell like a leaf tossed down the wind, down, down, with
one cry that overtook Daedalus far away. When he returned, and
sought high and low for the poor boy, he saw nothing but the
birdlike feathers afloat on the water, and he knew that Icarus was
drowned.
12 The nearest island he named lcaria, in memory of the child; but
he, in heavy grief, went to the temple of Apollo in Sicily, and there
hung up his wings as an offering. Never again did he attempt
to fly. ❧
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UNIT 5 Independent Learning • Icarus and Daedalus IL16