I reproduce this story from Edith Hamilton's "Mythology". My interest was in Scylla who I had read very early on, and when I was very young, and when I was very uninterested in mythology. The story was Ulysses, and his dreaded fight over the twin monsters of Scylla and Charybdis with his eventual triumph were one of the high points in my 5 page prose notes. In "Mythology" Hamilton dwells on Scylla in a chapter.

Onto the story… the myth…

Glaucus was a fisherman who was fishing one day from a green meadow sloping down to the sea. He had spread his catch out on the grass and was counting the fish when he saw them all stir and then, moving toward the water, slip into it and swim away. He was utterly amazed . Had a God done this or was ther some strange power in the grass? He picked a handful and ate it. At once an irresistible longing for the sea took possession of him. There was no denying it. He ran and leaped into the waves. The sea gods received him kindly and called on Ocean and Tethys to purge his mortal nature away and make him one of them. A hundred rivers were summoned to pour their waters upon him. He lost consciousness in the rushing flood. When he recovered he was a sea-god with hair green like the sea and a body ending in a fish's tail, to the swellers in the water a fine and familiar form, but strange and repellent to the dwellers on earth. So he seemed to the lovely nymph Scylla when she was bathing in a little bay and caught sight of him rising from the sea. She fled from him until she stood on a lofty promontory where she could safely watch him, wondering at the half-man, half-fish. Glaucus called up to her, "Maiden, I am no monster. I am a god with power over the waters - and I love you." But Scylla turned from him and hastening inland was lost to his sight.