Halcyon Days

From the Greek alkyon (kingfisher), the phrase traces to the myth of Alcyone and Ceyx as retold in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book 11). When Alcyone learned her husband Ceyx had drowned, she cast herself into the sea; the gods transformed them both into kingfishers, and her father Aeolus calmed the winds for fourteen days each winter so she could nest. These calm midwinter days became the original "halcyon days."