The Romance of Pan

Art by Frank Pape

I am Pan, Io Pan, Io Pan Pan! Pan!
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold, I am god,
Flesh to my bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox
And I rave, and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end -
Manniken, maiden, maenad, man,
In the might of Pan
Io Pan, Io Pan Pan! Pan! Io Pan!

 ~ Aleister Crowley

 

Pan has become a part of my life for a few years now – he doesn’t seem to go away. Not only does he, as a God, make me raise an eyebrow, but so do Cernunnos and Herne. It seems it’s best to combine this triple-god into one and name him the Horned God. As he seems to be a large part of my life, he’s become my patron god. For a long time now, any images of Pan, Herne or some horny fellow has taken my interest, in jewellery, artwork, statues and even men. Clearly I desire some sort of lover in his form, and in this way Pan came to me recently, in a fleeting love affair, or so I believe. But that’s another story!

Io Pan! For years, I’ve been interested in Pan or Cernunnos in fiction, and have been recently collecting stories all for an article, which I do not know will ever be published. For now I will put some of it here, on this blog. Mostly I take a note from Ronald Hutton and talk about Pan’s popularity within fiction and poetry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the age of Romanticism, Pan made a successful comeback into modern fiction, away from Arcadia and the interference of the Classical Gods. As I love stories, I have focused on these short tales involving Pan, which I have categorized and summarised.

'He epitomized the Summer months, 

the shady glades of mid-afternoon, 

an agricultural God for those who revered 

the swards of Old Albion'

 

Art by Alexandre Lisrel

 An Old Foreign God for Albion
Of all the Greek and Roman Gods to inspire and indulge the human race, Pan appeared within more literature than other Gods just before World War I. Professor Ronald Hutton himself dedicated an entire chapter to the return of the pagans’ God Pan, within novels, short stories and poems of the late Victorian and Edwardian period within his book Triumph of the Moon (1999). In classical times, Pan was considered ‘a comic-grotesque little country god’ – a kind of fool to the other Olympian Gods, a drunken, sexual deviant - a lesser god. Other gods entered into literature of the English and have done so since medieval times. One of them was Apollo, the handsome sun god of art and poetry. Who would have thought that this exceedingly attractive God fell in favour of the drunk, hideous Pan within the Victorian Era? Thanks to the poets and artists of the Romantic Age, Pan became an attractive representation of the émigré God of rustic England. He epitomized the Summer months, the shady glades of mid-afternoon, an agricultural God for those who revered the swards of Old Albion. England created their own image of Pan; gave him beauty, made him a pastoral pagan local god - a green Jesus - transporting him from the Ancient World, and welcoming him into their green and pleasant land. 

As the sciences began to take over academic thought in the nineteenth century, so did a new kind of magic and polytheism, and a regretfully lost connection to nature. Even with the British people’s familiarity with their landscape, they still sensed that awe of panic that Pan evokes. The panic is still out there – whether you are acquainted with the landscape or not. It appeared these artists, poets and writers anticipated that Arcadia must come to England.

Then Pan in stories and poetry abruptly stopped. The inception of World War I certainly did not help, the quixotic peacefulness England had enjoyed for almost a millennia, had been challenged by attacks from Europe. Not many of the English were quite the same after this war, were always on their guard, and perhaps did not get so lazily idealistic ever again. Pan enters literature in many aspects during this time. From hero, to helper, to lover, his connection as Nature God is never forgotten, no matter how much he meddles with mortals. These aspects that appear to emerge from the stories come into these categories – Pan as fear and terror, the sexual energy, the accepted god, the ‘Friend and Helper,’ corrupter of the clergy, lover, and hidden presence. Each category overlaps with each other in many combinations; each story captures some of these features.

Panic of the Presence 
E. M Forster’s short story The Story of a Panic (1902), Pan’s rambunctious energy completely terrifies a crowd of English tourists on a hill in the Italian countryside, scattering them blindly into the woods - all except for a lazy, spoilt and repellent English teenage boy, who is possessed and seduced by the God. The boy, Eustace, who was not afraid, never recovers from his meeting with the God, rolling in His ‘scent’ after the encounter, delving into the woods here and there on the return to the hotel. His behaviour disgusted the English compatriots who were with him, and even after his epiphany which improved him as a person, he was still treated as uncivil and bad-mannered - his panic was not a fear of Pan, but a fear of being trapped inside away from Nature. In A Touch of Pan (1917) by Algernon Blackwood, an egocentric couple indulging in adultery feel the terror of Pan when they delve into his domain, a pine forest. In Saki’s (Hector Munroe) short tale, The Music on the Hill (1911) Pan, an invisible presence but for his statue, sends a stag to fatally gore a woman, the new wife of a rural lord who worships Pan along with the local laymen. The wife, destroying an offering to Pan, dies as a result of the insult.

Sexual Powers

yayashin - deviant art

In A Touch of Pan, panic and lust both occurs. Blackwood’s otherworldly protagonists, Heber and Elspeth, both accept the Great Gods’ lustful blessings. Heber, a thirty year old, decides he dislikes his aristocratic fiancé Hermione, and is now enamoured of Elspeth, an otherworldly teenager, who dislikes society and prefers to go barefoot outside ‘to play with her kind.’ The two make plans to tryst and leave the condescending and pompous house party hosted by Elspeth’s parents, they frolic in the long grass, make love, and eventually join the fierce reverence of other fauns in the veneration of Pan Himself. Homosexual love was also esteemed by Pan in tales. In Forrest Reid’s The Garden God (1905), a young boy Grahame falls in love with a boy named Harold at his boarding school, seeing Harold as the God Pan, and loving him completely. In E. M Forster’s The Curate’s Friend, (1911) the faun makes the protagonist’s love interest fall in love with another man. In a way, Pan acts as a lustful Cupid.

Acceptance of the God
In my opinion, one of the best books about Pan from the early twentieth century is The Blessing of Pan (1928) by Lord Dunsany. A village in or around Wiltshire called Wolding, has its inhabitants meeting in the woods, drawn by haunting panpipes. One boy, Tommy Duffin, playing the panpipes which were a gift from Pan, entices other villages to fall under his trance. Eventually, the entire village succumbs to the enticing piping and worship of Pan at the old Stone Circle on the hill. The village, after it’s yielding to pagan worship, settled down into tranquil rural isolation, both self-sufficient and disconnected from the outside world.  A sequel of sorts was written by Charles de Lint with his book Greenmantle (1988).

Pan and the Twins (1922) by Eden Phillpotts, is set in Ancient Rome at the arrival of Christianity. The protagonist Aradius, a supposed orphan, and worshipper of the Nature God, becomes Pan’s friend. Pan rescues the abandoned slave youth by healing his wounds, and telling him who his father is. Once reunited with his father and becoming heir, Aradius meets his long lost twin brother Hilarion, a Christian priest who chooses to become a hermit in a cave on his brother’s land. Hilarion accepts the presence and existence of Pan, despite being very pious. 

Art by Harry Hargreaves - Wind in the Willows

In The Wind in the Willows, Ratty and Mole and the animals of the River and Wild Wood are like Pan – half man, half animal, but they speak and dress in clothes, row boats, drive cars (badly) and live in houses. Pan is physically half man, half animal, and that makes him the perfect God for them. They revere the earth, the river, the woods, and the sun; why not have a guardian God that represents those?

 

Corruption of the Clergy
It interests many readers to watch one religion being tarnished by another. Most people want to know where it ends up; stay loyal and trust faith, or change sides. Priests being confronted by Pan or his energy either accept it, or simply find his existence a distraction. It thrills pagans to read this – to have a pagan seduced and blessed by the Christian God is common enough in stories, but to have it happen the other way around is decadent. The Blessing of Pan, is the ultimate corruption of the clergy. The Vicar of Wolding, Elderick Anwrel , tries desperately hard to prevent his entire congregation from falling into the evil and unknown vices of pagan worship, but fails, in turn becoming the High Priest of Pan. 

The priest Harry in The Curate’s Friend, is at first appalled by the visitation of the faun when he is the only one who can see it. The faun teaches the priest to laugh and accept everything, which he does. Harry from then on sees the chalk downs - the earth - as a living thing, he hears it speak, whisper and sleep. 

Hilarion the hermit priest in Pan and the Twins does not become pagan, but he does listen to Pan’s advice and give up his hermit life to marry the woman he loves and help the unfortunate and oppressed.

‘Some august Presence was very, very near…’
To not see or hear Pan’s name, but to feel him near as an agreeable presence as an ‘anti-panic’ occurs a lot in many of the more subtly themed stories. The Wind in Willows is a prime example – the Rat and Mole feel him as they row towards the island in search of their friend.  In The Garden God, Grahame experiences Pan by a cricket pitch, while all the boys are distractedly playing, and later both he and Harold feel him when they make a shrine to him by the sea; to them he is the Unknown God. Tommy Duffin in The Blessing of Pan must have felt the influence, and been possessed by Pan, to be able to pick up the panpipes and begin playing, even without his knowledge of any tunes. While this manifestation is more pleasant than a Panic, it still justifies that Pan can have a gentler side when he is in the vicinity of humans.

The Great God Pan by Norman Price

Pan in Fiction
It’s become one of my favourite subjects, a pagan God seducing the earthbound mortals. It is strange that Pan himself, a raucous, sexual and savage entity, should inspire the writers of civil England, especially in the time between 1895 and 1918. Perhaps the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the removal of people from rural England into the satanic mills and blackened cities, encouraged writers to help the lay people remember the pastoral and the genius loci. The Romantic Age of the nineteenth century brought not only a surge of interest in romances like Arthurian and Robin Hood legends, but a growing interest in the old Gods, not so much to worship, but a frame for rural romanticism. Today, Pan or the Horned God often turns up in fiction as a battle between good and evil. In the Edwardian era, it seems he was just a decadent presence to accept. But I love these stories – The Blessing of Pan and A Touch of Pan especially. Blackwood’s tale really inspires my own writing, and indeed, I’ve written my own love story involving Pan, however it was written 12 months before I read Blackwood. Pan will forever be lover and friend to me – in my stories and life, and in these tales I feel closer to him, as every aspect of the author’s mind. Pan has been made Romantic, and that certainly suits the pagans of today.

Pan by Gerald Metcalfe

Muses, Daemons, the Genii…and Robin Hood

I am definitely happiest when I’m writing about writing. Writing stories is something I have been doing since I was about 10 or 11. When I discovered how much I liked writing, that was it for me, a lifelong passion. My sister is the illustrator, I the writer. We both were destined to have creativity run in our veins.

I don’t talk about it too much, rather I just get on with it.

For a few years now I’ve been writing a novel – The story idea came to me one day in 2010, sent by the Muse, Daemon, or the Genius- however you want to name it – jumped into my head fully planned out. I was in awe for a few hours after the epiphany. I love it when the Muse sends stuff like that. It’s profound and inexplicable. Now I know how Joan Lindsay felt when the Muse sent her Picnic at Hanging Rock that night.

Robin Hood. We have all heard of him. He is the quintessential English Green Man, hero of the greenwood, saver of the oppressed. He’s in my novel.

But he’s the tritagonist. Of sorts.

An average village girl is the protagonist. A girl, far away in Lincolnshire, is inspired by him to fight for her village, her girlfriends tagging along behind her in masks, hoods, with swords, bows and arrows… Her name is Eloise.

Robin Hood is now a big part of my life. I was inspired by the pagan Robin of Sherwood television show from the 1980s. Since then I’ve read about him, bought books on him, watched many Robin Hood films, old and new for research, ideas, and inspiration. Although I enjoy watching it sometimes, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is NOT on my list of great films. Instead, my favourite RH film is one that was released in 1991 – the same year as Prince of Thieves – but stars Patrick Bergin and Uma Thurman. Better, less American, less tacky, with a pagan festival thrown in for good measure, and Uma Thurman’s Marian taking her destiny into her own hands, dressing as a boy and leaving her fiancé (Bloody Normans!) to go and live with the handsome Robin in Sherwood. Her strong character inspired my Eloise and her Maidens.

I found several Robin Hood films on youtube and have been watching those. The Men of Sherwood Forest had a great 50s style.

I bought a book about Robin Hood by Stephen Knight when I was in London in October 2010, a few weeks after the Muse threw the story at me. And in 2013, I purchased The Robin Hood Companion – an encyclopaedia written by a friend of mine, Ronan Coghlan. It has the Gest in it, an early Robin Hood tale along with every other thing Robin Hood is connected to, in story, television and English landscape. 

Art by Newell C. Wyeth

Robin, as I said is the archetypal hero. His presence in the greenwood, where outlaws must run to, emboldens those of today a Luddite rebellion against those attempting to destroy the layman and the land. Damh the Bard sings of him, indicating that everyone is a son and daughter of Robin Hood because we stand up for not only the layman, but the English landscape, which presently appears to be diminishing under an autocratic government (Bloody Tories!). In Robin of Sherwood, he protects the forest. He is the first ecologist. His selflessness shows us how we can be, outlaws or not. Whatever happens from here on, Robin Hood has become a larger part of my life because of this.

And of my other stories? I’ve been writing many short ones of late. And busy with articles too. I kind of need to start small. If only my stories didn’t have a life of their own – in the sense that they are like people in my head – well, the characters are there - all the ideas, all the stories, are crowding together in there, asking me which one will go first. I tell them the newest one – which is Eloise. The older one I planned to work on first takes a depressed step backwards – unfortunately I am not sure if I can ever go back to it – I’ve lost the passion for it – Muse sending me Eloise destroyed that. All the smaller projects take it easier; they take a seat up the back on some bean bags and discuss how they are finished for the moment, but know they might be asked back for some tweaking. They are short stories that are finished or need to be edited. A couple of them are in the queue and know they will be played with occasionally.

'You have not even listed us! There are ideas back there on distant bean bags that we think you've forgotten about'
I reply that there is not even a story yet - the idea and the idea alone sit on that bean bag, and I have not thought of anything.

'What are these other things?' They poke at articles and short stories for publication - I tell them that they are small projects I might need to work on soon but will not take as much time.

They are right. I do need to list them and work out which ones to work on first, or develop in my head. Some handwritten ones have been left behind. I do not want to depress them and tell them they are abandoned for good, because I don't want them to be discarded. They simply might change - research is needed for one particular one that might need to be re-written. But that will come later. The whole gang are curious to see what I do......
Eloise and friends are taking priority, Carmine and Laurel are on hold, if not indefinitely. Angelique and her gargoyle are finished, (well, for now, it will be edited and added to), Iris and Robert finally made it to the faery realm. Trixie, her brothers and the wolves are finished, as is Damaris, as well as Agnes and Fawn. Julius and Philemon still dwell in the city, waiting to be animated, Zara and Oliver and friends are to be kind of re-written, and most of these want to join Oriana's story.

It’s just that they have become such a family of stories and ideas that I cannot ignore them now. As I become a more confident writer, and develop stories better and better as I get older, I want to do them all. They all like each other and some plan to intertwine. Many of the characters I can think of - from short stories I have written or started, are asking to be included in a trilogy idea I have had (Oriana). 'Wow!' I say 'That is quite a project, but I love it (truth be known, I love the idea of Zara and Iris running about together). There are a lot of you. I will have to think of your role in the story. Is it alright that I write shorter stories on your origins first so I know where I am coming from?'
'Sure!' is their reply 'And don't worry, you'll work out our roles, you always do.'
I feel a little pessimistic about that, but know in time it will work....

At age 11, I would not have imagined this… Although it is my imagination that is extraordinary at working things out…

British Gothic Romance Novels – Elizabeth Bonhote’s ‘Bungay Castle’

When I was in Suffolk in June of 2006, I stayed in Bungay as I mentioned here. Bungay, amoung other East Anglian villages, still have myth and legend attached to it. A lot of the villages in East Anglia are quite untouched, and I think that was because of its location. Just as the West is untouched (Cornwall and Devon), people travelled north from London, avoiding the West and East, thus the roads and byways are less driven, therefore still holds mystery. Black Shuck walks those byways. And other goolies. But another thing that is amazing about Bungay is the female author who was born and lived there.

Bungay Castle, Midsummer 2006

Elizabeth Bonhote lived from 1744 – 1818. She wrote novels during Ann Radcliffe’s time. Before Jane Austen. Before the Brontes, and their issues with publishing as women. Her most notable novel is Bungay Castle (1796). This novel comes under the category of Gothic Romance. It makes me wonder whether Jane Austen read Bungay Castle like she did Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. This book was first published in 1796, and then promptly forgotten about. For a couple of centuries, it seems. When it was re-discovered, it was edited and given an introduction by Curt Herr, an American lecturer in literature at Kutztown University. Curt Herr even made it to Bungay for the re-releasing of the novel in April 2006, the year of the novel's 210th anniversary.

While I visited Bungay Castle with a friend on that warm Sunday near midsummer in 2006, I purchased the Bungay Castle book from the gift shop of Bungay Castle. You cannot get any better than that.



A model of the Castle as it
 probably appeared

I had been intrigued by the book at my friend’s fathers house, flipping through, reading the introduction. Considered a very feminist novel, it includes women who become heroines to admire. They even rescue men. I read it in London, not long after I got it, and tried to picture how Bungay Castle itself looked back then. The Castle itself is not a large one. It went up, rather than out, with a wall all around it.

 

An entrance to the tunnels?

The tale includes gothic subterranean passages, dungeons, and towers, all of which Bungay Castle had, or is rumoured to have had. There are tales of tunnels that run from the Castle to St Mary’s Church and its priory; as in the novel, the heroes and heroines used the tunnels often during their adventures. One of the heroines was forced by her father to enter into the convent at the priory and her lover used to come through the tunnels to meet her. Gothic indeed! Walter the emaciated prisoner; rescued by his lover Rosaline, whose father owned the Castle, performs heroic deeds of his own. Oh, for the BBC to make an adaptation of it! I believe Bonhote exaggerated the size of the Castle, but then she had the license too. It was fiction!  

Looking towards the Tower

Elizabeth Bonhote loved Bungay Castle. Her husband even bought it for her once, but she could not enjoy it due to people squatting in it. Well, it was the late 18^th century, people lived in shacks anywhere they could. Built by the Normans and later by Roger Bigod, the Castle had a sense of awe for Elizabeth; when she owned it she wrote the novel, invoking those gothic sensibilities that she experienced in her mind.

This novel inspired me to purchase all the other gothic romances out there – I bought The Monk, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein, Vathek, and anthologies of gothic horrors and ghost stories, like M.R James. And of course, Northanger Abbey. But you cannot own all them and not own Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. A lovely collection, suitable for all bookshelves.

Purchase Bungay Castle here and revel in its mystery. For a forgotten English Gothic romance, it is pretty wonderful.

 

In Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, these horrors are also mentioned…

Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) by Eliza Parsons.
Clermont, a Tale (1798) by Regina Maria Roche.
The Mysterious Warning, a German Tale (1796) by Eliza Parsons.
The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest (1794) by 'Ludwig Flammenberg'.
The Midnight Bell (1798) by Francis Lathom.
Orphan of the Rhine (1798) by Eleanor Sleath.
Horrid Mysteries (1796) by the Marquis de Grosse

These books, with their lurid titles, were once thought to be the creations of Jane Austen's imagination, but research in the first half of the 20th century by Michael Sadleir and Montague Summers confirmed that they did actually exist and stimulated renewed interest in the Gothic. All seven were republished by the Folio Society in London in 1968, and Valancourt Books is in the process of reprinting the seven. (from Wikipedia)

 

BUNGAY CASTLE: A NOVEL.

Elizabeth Bonhote (1744-1818)

Life at Bungay Castle seems ideal for the De Morney family. Nestled in the abundant countryside of Suffolk, Bungay Castle’s massive towers reach for blue skies and its solid stone walls are firmly planted in the earth - but all that’s about to change. Strong winds from a violent storm bring the sound of chilling, ghostly cries located far below the castle’s floors. The young De Morneys, Roseline and Edwin, with their friend Madeline, begin a frightening search through the ancient subterranean passageways to discover the cause. Among the dark haunted dungeons, they discover a secret from their family’s past that will forever change their lives. Cob-webbed passageways lit by a single candle, rotting caskets, ghostly sightings, and a mysterious mournful cry are just a few of the abundant gothic surprises in store for all who dare to wander beyond the castle’s locked doors.
Firmly rooted in the Domestic Gothic tradition, Elizabeth Bonhote’s rediscovered 1796 classic is a treasure chest of gothic elements. Combining romance, mystery, seduction, and betrayal, Bungay Castle revises and reinvents the tradition of the trapped female heroine. As we follow Roseline’s journey, we become aware of one of the novel’s most unique aspects: it is a surprisingly feminist novel- a rare achievement in the eighteenth century gothic genre. Rather than waiting to be rescued by men, the young women of Bungay castle achieve agency over their lives, refuse patriarchal orders, and become the rescuing heroines. An exemplary blend of sentiment, romance and the gothic, this reprint is a welcome and long overdue addition to the bookshelves of academics, subway riders, goths, and anyone longing to rediscover the joy of a great read.

 

The Suffolk village of Bungay as it may have looked in the Middle Ages.