A Book of Myths
even children shrank in terror from his touch, and hungry and thirsty
and sick at heart he wearily dragged along his weighty robes of gold.
Gold was power, he knew well, yet of what worth was gold while he
starved? Gold could not buy him life and health and happiness.
In despair, at length he cried to the god who had given him the gift
that he hated.
"Save me, O Bacchus!" he said. "A witless one am I, and the folly of
my desire has been my undoing. Take away from me the accursed Golden
Touch, and faithfully and well shall I serve thee forever."
Then Bacchus, very pitiful for him, told Midas to go to Sardis, the
chief city of his worshippers, and to trace to its source the river
upon which it was built. And in that pool, when he found it, he was to
plunge his head, and so he would, for evermore, be freed from the
Golden Touch.
It was a long journey that Midas then took, and a weary and a starving
man was he when at length he reached the spring where the river
Pactolus had its source. He crawled forward, and timidly plunged in
his head and shoulders. Almost he expected to feel the harsh grit of
golden water, but instead there was the joy he had known as a peasant
boy when he laved his face and drank at a cool spring when his day's
toil was ended. And when he raised his face from the pool, he knew
that his hateful power had passed from him, but under the water he saw
grains of gold glittering in the sand, and from that time forth the
river Pactolus 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.
First of all Pan took his fragile reeds, and as he played, the leaves
on the trees shivered, and the sleeping lilies raised their heads, and
the birds ceased their song to listen and then flew straight to their
mates. And all the beauty of the world grew more beautiful, and all
its terror grew yet more grim, and still Pan piped on, and laughed to
see the nymphs and the fauns first dance in joyousness and then
tremble in fear, and the buds to blossom, and the stags to bellow in
their lordship of the hills. When he ceased, it was as though a
tensely-drawn string had broken, and all the earth lay breathless and
mute. And Pan turned proudly to the golden-haired god who had listened
as he had spoken through the hearts of reeds to the hearts of men.
"Canst, then, make music like unto my music, Apollo?" he said.
Then Apollo, his purple robes barely hiding the perfection of his
limbs, a wreath of laurel crowning his yellow curls, looked down at
Pan from his godlike height and smiled in silence. For a moment his
hand silently played over the golden strings of his lyre, and then his
finger-tips gently touched them. And every creature there who had a
soul, felt that that soul had wings, and the wings sped them straight
to Olympus. Far away from all earth-bound creatures they flew, and
dwelt in magnificent serenity amongst the Immortals. No longer was
there strife, or any dispeace. No more was there fierce warring
between the actual and the unknown. The green fields and thick woods
had faded into nothingness, and their creatures, and the fair nymphs
and dryads, and the wild fauns and centaurs longed and fought no more,
and man had ceased to desire the impossible. Throbbing nature and
passionately desiring life faded into dust before the melody that
Apollo called forth, and when his strings had ceased to quiver and
only the faintly remembered echo of his music remained, it was as
though the earth had passed away and all things had become new.
For the space of many seconds all was silence.
Then, in low voice, Apollo asked:
"Ye who listen--who is the victor?"
And earth and sea and sky, and all the creatures of earth and sky, and
of the deep, replied as one:
"The victory is thine, Divine Apollo."
Yet was there one dissentient voice.
Midas, sorely puzzled, utterly un-understanding, was relieved when the
music of Apollo ceased. "If only Pan would play again," he murmured to
himself. "I wish to live, and Pan's music gives me life. I love the
woolly vine-buds and the fragrant pine-leaves, and the scent of the
violets in the spring. The smell of the fresh-ploughed earth is dear
to me, the breath of the kine that have grazed in the meadows of wild
parsley and of asphodel. I want to drink red wine and to eat and love
and fight and work and be joyous and sad, fierce and strong, and very
weary, and to sleep the dead sleep of men who live only as weak
mortals do."
Therefore he raised his voice, and called very loud: "Pan's music is
sweeter and truer and greater than the music of Apollo. Pan is the
victor, and I, King Midas, give him the victor's crown!"
With scorn ineffable the sun-god turned upon Midas, his peasant's face
transfigured by his proud decision. For a little he gazed at him in
silence, and his look might have turned a sunbeam to an icicle.
Then he spoke:
"The ears of an ass have heard my music," he said. "Henceforth shall
Midas have ass's ears."
And when Midas, in terror, clapped his hands to his crisp black hair,
he found growing far beyond it, the long, pointed ears of an ass.
Perhaps what hurt him most, as he fled away, was the shout of
merriment that came from Pan. And fauns and nymphs and satyrs echoed
that shout most joyously.
Willingly would he have hidden in the woods, but there he found no
hiding-place. The trees and shrubs and flowering things seemed to
shake in cruel mockery. Back to his court he went and sent for the
court hairdresser, that he might bribe him to devise a covering for
these long, peaked, hairy symbols of his folly. Gladly the hairdresser
accepted many and many oboli, many and many golden gifts, and all
Phrygia wondered, while it copied, the strange headdress of the king.
But although much gold had bought his silence, the court barber was
unquiet of heart. All day and all through the night he was tormented
by his weighty secret. And then, at length, silence was to him a
torture too great to be borne; he sought a lonely place, there dug a
deep hole, and, kneeling by it, softly whispered to the damp earth:
"King Midas has ass's ears."
Greatly relieved, he hastened home, and was well content until, on the
spot where his secret lay buried, rushes grew up. And when the winds
blew through them, the rushes whispered for all those who passed by to
hear: "King Midas has ass's ears! King Midas has ass's ears!" Those
who listen very carefully to what the green rushes in marshy places
whisper as the wind passes through them, may hear the same thing to
this day. And those who hear the whisper of the rushes may, perhaps,
give a pitying thought to Midas--the tragic comedian of mythology.
CEYX AND HALCYONE
"St. Martin's summer, halcyon days."
_King Henry VI_, i. 2, 131.
"Halcyon days"--how often is the expression made use of, how seldom do
its users realise from whence they have borrowed it.
"These were halcyon days," says the old man, and his memory wanders
back to a time when for him
"All the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen."
Yet the story of Halcyone is one best to be understood by the
heavy-hearted woman who wanders along the bleak sea-beach and strains
her weary eyes for the brown sail of the fishing-boat that will never
more return.
Over the kingdom of Thessaly, in the days of long ago, there reigned a
king whose name was Ceyx, son of Hesperus, the Day Star, and almost as
radiant in grace and beauty as was his father. His wife was the fair
Halcyone, daughter of AEolus, ruler of the winds, and most perfectly
did this king and queen love one another. Their happiness was unmarred
until there came a day when Ceyx had to mourn for the loss of a
brother. Following close on the heels of this disaster came direful
prodigies which led Ceyx to fear that in some way he must have
incurred the hostility of the gods. To him there was no way in which
to discover wherein lay his fault, and to make atonement for it, but
by going to consult the oracle of Apollo at Claros, in Ionia. When he
told Halcyone what he must do, she knew well that she must not try to
turn him from his solemn purpose, yet there hung over her heart a
black shadow of fear and of evil foreboding that no loving words of
assurance could drive away. Most piteously she begged him to take her
with him, but the king knew too well the dangers of the treacherous
AEgean Sea to risk on it the life of the woman that he loved so well.
"I promise," he said, "by the rays of my Father the Day Star, that if
fate permits I will return before the moon shall have twice rounded
her orb."
Down by the shore the sailors of King Ceyx awaited his coming, and
when with passionately tender love he and Halcyone had taken farewell
of each other, the rowers sat down on the benches and dipped their
long oars into the water.
With rhythmic swing they drove the great ship over the grey sea, while
Ceyx stood on deck and gazed back at his wife until his eyes could no
longer distinguish her from the rocks on the shore, nor could she any
longer see the white sails of the ship as it crested the restless
waves. Heavier still was her heart when she turned away from the
shore, and yet more heavy it grew as the day wore on and dark night
descended. For the air was full of the clamorous wailings of the
fierce winds whose joy it is to lash the waves into rage and to strew
with dead men and broken timber the angry, surf-beaten shore.
"My King," she sighed to herself. "My King! my Own!" And through the
weary hours she prayed to the gods to bring him safely back to her,
and many times she offered fragrant incense to Juno, protectress of
women, that she might have pity on a woman whose husband and true
lover was out in the storm, a plaything for ruthless winds and waves.
A helpless plaything was the king of Thessaly. Long ere the dim
evening light had made of the shore of his own land a faint, grey