Myth. Also 6–7 fawn. [ad. L. Faun-us, proper name of a god or demigod worshipped by shepherds and farmers, and identified with the Gr. Pan; also in pl. fauni (cf. Gr. Πᾶνες), a class of similar deities. (Chaucer’s fanny is the L. plural.]

1

  One of a class of rural deities; at first represented like men with horns and the tail of a goat, afterwards with goats’ legs like the Satyrs, to whom they were assimilated in lustful character.

2

c. 1374.  Chaucer, Troylus, IV. 1544.

        On satiry and fawny more and lesse,
Þat halue goddes ben of wildernesse.
    Ibid. (c. 1386), Knt.’s T., 2070.
In which they woneden in rest and pees,
Nimphes, Faunes, and Amadriades.

3

1579.  Spenser, Sheph. Cal., July, 77.

        Here han the holy Faunes resourse,
  and Syluanes haunten rathe.

4

1631.  Massinger, Emp. East, III. iii.

        The poets’ dreams of lustful fauns and satyrs,
Would make me feat I know not what.

5

1728.  Swift, Let., 14 Sept., in Wks. (1841), II. 105. Apollo’s your patron, and the muses, and the fawns, and old Silenus, et Bacchus Pater, will crown you with joy, and your head will never ache, and your belly will never croak with the colie.

6

1830.  Scott, Demonol., iv. These silvans, satyrs and fauns, with whom superstition peopled the lofty banks and tangled copses of this romantic country.

7

1850.  Tennyson, In Mem., cxviii.

        To shape and use. Arise and fly
    The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
    Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.

8