BOOK II.
Section IV.— PAN".
rhe song
of the
breeze in
the reeds.
Pan, the
purifying
breeze.
The harp of Orpheus and the lyre of Hermes are but other forms of the reed pipe of Pan. Of the real meaning of this name the Western poets were utterly unconscious. In the Homeric Hymn he is said to be so called because all the gods were cheered by his music^ Still through all the grotesque and uncouth details of the myth, which tells us of his goat's feet and horns, his noisy laughter and capricious action, the idea of wind is pre-eminent. It is the notion not so much of the soft and lulling strains of Hermes in his gentler mood, or of the irresistible power of the harp of Orpheus, as of the purifying breezes which blow gently or strong, for a long or a little while, waking the echoes now here now there, in defiance of all plan or system, and with a wantonness which baffles all human powers of calculatiotL To this idea the Homeric Hymn adheres with a singular fidelity, as it tells us how he wanders sometimes on the mountain summits, sometimes plunging into the thickets of the glen, sometimes by the stream side or up the towering crags, or singing among the reeds at eventide. So s'R'ift is his pace that the birds of the air cannot pass him by. With him play the water-maidens, and the patter of the nymphs' feet is heard as they join in his song by the side of the dark fountain.^ Like Hermes again and Sarameya, he is the child of the dawn and the morning, and it is his wont to lie down at noontide in a slumber from which he takes it ill if he be rudely roused.^ Of his parentage we have many stories, but the same notion underlies them all Some- times, as in the Homeric Hymn, he is the son of Hermes and of the nymph Dr}'ops, sometimes of Hermes and Penelope, sometimes of Penelope and Odysseus ; but Penelope is the bride of the toiling sun, who is parted from her whether at morning or eventide, and to be her son is to be the child of Sarama. Nor is the idea changed if he be spoken of as the son of heaven and earth (Ouranos and Gaia), or of air and water (Aither and a Nereid).
Pan then is strictly the purifying breeze, the Sanskrit pavana,* a name which reappears in the Latin Favonius, and perhaps also in Faunus ; and his real character, as the god of the gentler winds, is brought out most prominently in the story of his love for Pitys, and of the jealousy of the blustering Boreas, who hurled the maiden from a rock and changed her into a pine-tree. The myth explains itself In
' IJyinn to Pan, 47. ' Ju. 7-20. • Theok.vii. 107.
- Max iMuller, Chip, ii. 159.
