Syrinx was born to Ladon, the river-god whose stream winds through the mountains of Arcadia, or to Hermes, the messenger god with the golden wand, depending on which poet tells the tale. She was a nymph of the wild places, one of the many maidens who followed Artemis, the virgin huntress who protects young girls and demands eternal chastity from her companions. Syrinx had sworn the same oath, dedicating herself to the hunt and the mountain paths rather than to marriage or motherhood. She carried a bow and wore the short tunic of the huntress, and her beauty was of the untamed sort that flourishes in high places where the air is thin and the sun is sharp. She roamed the slopes of Mount Lycaeus and the banks of the river Ladon, far from the cities of men, believing herself safe in the wilderness.

The defining crisis of her life came when Pan saw her. The god was hunting on the same Arcadian mountain, his goat legs carrying him swiftly over the rocks. He saw Syrinx moving through the trees with her bow strung and her hounds at her heels, and desire seized him with the sudden violence that always characterised the god of the wild. He called out to her, promising that she need not fear him, that he was no rough rustic despite his goat hooves and shaggy hide. But Syrinx knew the stories of nymphs who had trusted the gods and paid for it with their freedom. She fled, dropping her bow and arrows, running through the thickets with Pan in pursuit.

The chase was desperate. Pan was faster than any mortal, and his goat legs were made for the mountains. Syrinx ran until she reached the banks of the river Ladon, the stream of her father. The water blocked her path, deep and swift, and she could see Pan's shadow falling across the stones behind her. In her terror, she prayed to the river-nymphs, her sisters in the water, begging them to save her from the god's embrace. The nymphs heard her prayer and transformed her on the spot, dissolving her body into the reeds that grew thick along the riverbank. When Pan reached out to seize her, his hands closed on nothing but hollow stalks, and the wind passing through them made a mournful sound that seemed to carry her voice.

Pan stood by the river in despair. He looked at the reeds and saw that they were of unequal length, each producing a different note as the breeze passed through it. In his sorrow and his cunning, he cut seven stalks and bound them with wax. He pressed his lips to the reeds and blew, and the sound that emerged was so sweet and so sad that the birds fell silent. This was the first panpipe, the syrinx, named for the nymph who had escaped him only by ceasing to be a woman. Pan carried the instrument ever after, and its music became the signature sound of the Arcadian wilds.

The Romans loved the tale, and Ovid, the poet of the Metamorphoses, told it with a pathos that made it unforgettable. In the Renaissance, the painting of Pan and Syrinx was a favourite of the Baroque masters. The French composer Claude Debussy wrote his "Syrinx" for solo flute in 1913, capturing the melancholy sound of the panpipes. The word syrinx entered medical terminology in the nineteenth century when physicians named the fluid-filled cavity of the spinal cord after the hollow reed, a strange legacy for a nymph who had wanted only to be left alone.