Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, goddess of the cornfield. As a young girl she was known as Core, the maiden, but now she is called Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, and each time she cuts a hair from her head, someone dies. This is what happened.

One day, Core was picking flowers in a meadow when the ground opened up at her feet.  Out of the gaping earth drove fierce Hades, Kind of the Underworld, in his great chariot drawn by four jet black stallions.  Hades had loved Core from a distance and had brooded in his dark kingdom over her bright beauty.  In an instant he seized her, pulled her into his chariot, and dragged her down with him. Her screams still echoed in the air above the chasm, but Core was gone.

Demeter, her mother heard her cries. Dressing herself in mourning, she lit two torches at fiery Mount Etna and, with one in each hand, wandered the world for nine days and nights, neither eating nor drinking, calling for her daughter.  But no answer came.  At last Demeter came to Helios, the sun, who had seen everything. "It is no use calling," he said. "Your daughter, Core, is now the bride of Hades.  She is no longer a maid; her new name is Persephone.

Demeter had been the gentlest of all gods and goddesses, but at this news she let out a terrible cry. She turned her anger on  the world, and forbade the flowers to bloom or the crops to grow.  Soon the earth became a wasteland.  The gods begged Demeter to relent, but she would not.  At  last Zeus ordered Hades to give up the girl, provided she had not eaten the food of the dead.  Persephone had eaten nothing but six pomegranate seeds given to her by the gardener Ascalaphus, so Hades was forced to agree.

When Persephone reached the upper world, she ran to embrace her mother. Demeter's anger melted, and the world became green again. Zeus told Persephone that each year she must spend six months in the Underworld, as the bride of Hades, one winter month for each seed that she had eaten.  But for the other six months, of spring and summer, she could return to the living world to be with her mother.