Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/233

Rh still less how Pan appeared to the mind's eye of their primitive ancestors, would only be to repeat what has been said above. My complaint here is that Roscher's explanation does not explain. Let us grant that Pan is a hunter, that the hunter sleeps out of nights, that the Moon looks down on him, or visits him, even as she visited Endymion — still the most remarkable feature in Philargyrius' myth requires explaining, that is, why did Pan wrap himself "niveis velleribus" ? As for Philargyrius' explanation that it was "ut illi formosus videretur" — credat Roscherius. Or if this sounds disrespectful to Roscher — and Roscher is entitled, as the editor of the Ausführliches Lexikon, to the respect and gratitude of every student of mythology — let me put it this way : — Roscher has proved many things, but he has omitted to prove that the garb in question was considered de rigueur in a wooer, by the shepherd swains of Greece and their mays. Yet it was evidently indispensable on this occasion. Without it Pan would not have worked his wicked will. In fine, it is of the essence of the myth ; and if it had been an ordinary costume for the purpose, Philargyrius would not have mentioned it, or would not have thought an explanation necessary. And here I must mention it as one of the deficiencies of Selene, that Roscher never uses ritual to account for moon-myths. It may of course be suggested that it accidentally happens that no moon-myth can be explained from ritual. But I would venture to point to this myth of Pan and Selene. If Mannhardt and Frazer are right in regarding the "sacred marriage" of Zeus and Hera as a piece of "sympathetic magic" designed by primitive man to effect the union of two spirits of vegetation, and so to ensure the fertility of his fields and flocks ; and if, further, they are right in regarding Pan as a spirit of vegetation, who appears most frequently as a goat, or in semi-goat shape ; then it is obvious that the myth of Pan and Selene is a myth having its origin in ritual. Somewhere