Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

248 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK grotesque and uncouth details of the myth, which tell 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 calculation.
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 swift 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. 1 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. 2 Of his parentage we have many stories,
but the same notion underlies them all. Sometimes, as in
the Homeric Hymn, he is the son of Hermes and of the
nymph Dryops, sometimes of Hermes and Penelope, some-
times 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, the Pan then is strictly the purifying breeze, the Sanskrit
purifying pavana, 3 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 Professor Max Muller's words, ' We need but walk with
1 Hymn to Pan, 7-20.
2 Theok. vii. 107.
8 Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 159.