A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

was noted for its gold.
One lesson the peasant king had learnt by paying in suffering for a
mistake, but there was yet more suffering in store for the tragic
comedian.
He had now no wish for golden riches, nor even for power. He wished
to lead the simple life and to listen to the pipings of Pan along with the
goat-herds on the mountains or the wild creatures in the woods. Thus it
befell that he was present one day at a contest between Pan and Apollo
himself. It was a day of merry-making for nymphs and fauns and
dryads, and all those who lived in the lonely solitudes of Phrygia came
to listen to the music of the god who ruled them. For as Pan sat in the
shade of a forest one night and piped on his reeds until the very
shadows danced, and the water of the stream by which he sat leapt high
over the mossy stones it passed, and laughed aloud in its glee, the god
had so gloried in his own power that he cried:
"Who speaks of Apollo and his lyre? Some of the gods may be well
pleased with his music, and mayhap a bloodless man or two. But my
music strikes to the heart of the earth itself. It stirs with rapture the very
sap of the trees, and awakes to life and joy the innermost soul of all
things mortal."
Apollo heard his boast, and heard it angrily.
"Oh, thou whose soul is the soul of the untilled ground!" he said,
"wouldst thou place thy music, that is like the wind in the reeds, beside
my music, which is as the music of the spheres?"
And Pan, splashing with his goat's feet amongst the water-lilies of the
stream on the bank of which he sat, laughed loudly and cried:
"Yea, would I, Apollo! Willingly would I play thee a match--thou on
thy golden lyre--I on my reeds from the river."
Thus did it come to pass that Apollo and Pan matched against each
other their music, and King Midas was one of the judges.