I had offered these definitions to the internet, years ago, but was rejected, for lack of citation. I am certain that all these senses come from a reading of The Golf Omnibus, by P.G. Wodehouse, but i can’t be bothered to go back thru the whole thing and find them. Maybe i will someday. You could look them up.
Paganican
(1) of, or concerning, the Cult of Golf. The over-riding philosophical and moral orientation of ancient Celtic tribes from which the Game of Golf is derived. See also Highland Games
(2) to be severely austere in the observance of a very few unwritten laws, and penally punitive to transgressors.
(3) to be unforgiving, parsimonious, curmudgeonly in the pursuit of some High-Minded or Noble End.
What is not arguable is that paganica was a Roman Game, an historical certainty
though it might be conceded that the provenance of the lineage between paganica & golf is uncertain, i maintain that the citations in Wodehouse to which i can’t exactly point prove the assertion. The classical training & erudition of Wodehouse, in addition to the sincerity of his sporting enthusiasm give him that postion of authority, just IMVHO.
The fusion of Roman Order and Celtic Wildness, I also maintain, reaches its flowering in the game of golf, and its fruiting in Wodehouse, if you see how i mean. And the importance of THAT is that Golf is the flowering of Culture & Civilisation, the fusions of Violence & Rationality, of Beauty & Crudity, of Risk & Reward, of Man & Nature (the Universe, if you prefer), and so on . . .