It's become a pretty generic term and if you research virtually any country, you will find references to it now but basic definition from the Oxford Classical dicrionary:
Other sites:
http://www.loggia.com/myth/syrinx.html
nymphs (
nymph
, ‘maiden’), in Greek myth, female personifications of various natural objects, rivers, trees, mountains; they were vague beings, young and beautiful, fond of music and dancing, long-lived but not immortal, usually gentle, occasionally formidable. They possessed some divine gifts, such as that of prophecy. The nymphs of trees, especially oak trees, were called dryads (
drys, originally ‘tree’, but commonly ‘oak tree’). Hamadryads were tree-nymphs whose life depended on that of their tree. Nymphs of springs, rivers, and lakes were naiads; those of mountains oreads. Before the battle of Plataea against the Persians (479
BC), the nymphs of Mount Cithaeron were among the deities to whom the Athenian commander Aristeids was told to pray by the Delphic Oracle.
http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?entry=t9.e1988
