A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

another the earth. Pan was Nature incarnate. He was the Earth itself.
Many are the stories of his genealogy, but the one that is given in one
of the Homeric hymns is that Hermes, the swift-footed young god,
wedded Dryope, the beautiful daughter of a shepherd in Arcadia, and to
them was born, under the greenwood tree, the infant, Pan. When
Dryope first looked on her child, she was smitten with horror, and fled
away from him. The deserted baby roared lustily, and when his father,
Hermes, examined him he found a rosy-cheeked thing with prick ears
and tiny horns that grew amongst his thick curls, and with the dappled
furry chest of a faun, while instead of dimpled baby legs he had the
strong, hairy hind legs of a goat. He was a fearless creature, and merry
withal, and when Hermes had wrapped him up in a hare skin, he sped
to Olympus and showed his fellow-gods the son that had been born to
him and the beautiful nymph of the forest. Baby though he was, Pan
made the Olympians laugh. He had only made a woman, his own
mother, cry; all others rejoiced at the new creature that had come to
increase their merriment. And Bacchus, who loved him most of all, and
felt that here was a babe after his own heart, bestowed on him the name
by which he was forever known--Pan, meaning All.
Thus Pan grew up, the earthly equal of the Olympians, and, as he grew,
he took to himself the lordship of woods and of solitary places. He was
king of huntsmen and of fishermen, lord of flocks and herds and of all
the wild creatures of the forest. All living, soulless things owned him
their master; even the wild bees claimed him as their overlord. He was
ever merry, and when a riot of music and of laughter slew the stillness
of the shadowy woods, it was Pan who led the dancing throng of
white-limbed nymphs and gambolling satyrs, for whom he made
melody from the pipes for whose creation a maid had perished.
Round his horns and thick curls he presently came to wear a crown of
sharp pine-leaves, remembrance of another fair nymph whose
destruction he had brought about.
Pitys listened to the music of Pan, and followed him even as the
children followed the Pied Piper of later story. And ever his playing
lured her further on and into more dangerous and desolate places, until