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The Death of Pan
But that indefatigable geographer Pausanias when he travelled
round Greece in the second century A.D., found evidence of Pan’s cult
in shrines, caves and altars which were not neglected. And the cult
continued. The case of those who hold that the Greeks have always
been pagan, that Christianity never touched the roots of their lives,
begins to look plausible. But it is a case that must be approached
warily, for several reasons. First, we must not forget those who lived in
the towns, who mixed with the Venetians, who doubtless often looked
down on the country folk just as the modern townsfolk often do: the
folk songs are not good evidence for their beliefs, yet they are just as
much Cretans as the ‘folk’. Second, there is abundant evidence from
outside the songs of the hold Christianity has had on the Cretans –
evidence from the countless churches all over the island, from the
stories of Cretan sacred wars against the Turks. Third, we must not fall
too easily for the theory that folk songs show what a people really
believes, that they contain the distilled wisdom, the hard core of a
race’s philosophy; and that therefore the paganism of Greek songs
shows that the Greeks have in some way always remained cryptopagans.
For although it may be granted that any major theme in a
country’s folk song is important to the race’s life and interests, it does
not follow that everything which is important to a race’s life and
interests finds a place in folk song.
To take one obvious example. The sea is physically closer to most
Greeks than to most Englishmen. It supplies thousands of them with a
livelihood. The Greeks are a nation of sailors and merchants. Yet the
sea, which is a major interest of literary poets and writers, hardly
figures in folk poetry. There is only one important ballad about the
sea: ‘O Kyr Varies’ (Mister Northwind). In one form of this a ship is
engulfed by a tempest. A Jew who is on board swears that if he is saved
he will become Christian; but thinking, in the lull that follows, to have
escaped, he goes back on his oath, and the ship is lost after all. There
are some variants on this theme. But if we had to judge from the folk
songs alone we should never have guessed how important the sea has
always been to the Greeks. Thus even in folk poetry one must beware
of the argument from silence.
It may be then that sincere beliefs in the doctrines of Christianity
just do not happen to form a suitable subject for folk poetry. But the
case for paganism is not just that the songs contain non-Christian
elements, as we shall see; it is that the system of beliefs contained in
the folk songs actually contradicts Christianity in several important
ways – for example, over the question of life after death. This being
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