Jean Lang (1857-1932) was a writer and folklorist. The main fields of her interests were ancient mythology and legends, their origins and changing over time. A Book of Myths (1914) is one of the most know works of Jeanie Lang, as well as Stories of the Border Marches (1916).
Hyacinthus is myth, included in A Book of Myths. "Whom the gods love die young"-truly it would seem so, as we read the old tales of men and of women beloved of the gods. To those men who were deemed worthy of being companions of the gods, seemingly no good fortune came. Hyacinthus was a Spartan youth, son of Clio, one of the Muses, and of the mortal with whom she had mated, and from mother, or father, or from the gods themselves, he had received the gift of beauty. A gift that will eventually become his undoing.