SOME years ago the announcement went abroad that the familiar story of William Tell was not historically true; that such a person never existed, or, if he did, could never have played the rôle ascribed to him as founder of the Swiss Confederation. It was discovered that when the methods of research which Niebuhr had used with so much skill to elucidate the origin of Rome were applied also to the early days of the Confederation, the episode of William Tell became a fireside tale, a bit of folk-lore; valuable from a literary standpoint, but without historical significance. Unfortunately, he had long been regarded as a universal household friend, a prime favorite with the children, and one who appealed also to their elders as a singularly picturesque representative of Liberty striving successfully against Tyranny. He had, moreover, called forth the best powers of at least one great poet, Schiller, and one famous musician, Rossini, so that his claim seemed to the world established beyond question by the sanction of genius. It was natural, therefore, that this adverse report should be received with incredulity and indignation. At first people preferred to cling to their belief in William Tell, rather than to sacrifice another illusion of their childhood to the all-devouring, investigating spirit of the age; the more so because they knew little or nothing about

the history of Switzerland beyond this episode. But when the best authorities, one by one, declared themselves against the truth of the tradition, the conviction gradually gained ground that the old hero must be classified as a legendary personage.

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There is no period in all history so generally misunderstood as that which marks the origin of the Swiss Confederation; partly on account of the scarcity of authentic contemporary documents, but principally on account of the false versions which unscrupulous chroniclers have handed down to us. fact, so great is this want of records and so confusing are the traditions that the dawn of Swiss history is probably doomed to remain shrouded in a certain amount of obscurity. It is not my purpose in this article to follow the new school of native historians in their task of reconstructing this perplexing age, but rather to examine the version which they have been obliged to reject as unhistorical.

The truth is, there always have been a certain number of objectors to the accuracy of the tradition which based Swiss liberty upon the shot of a skillful archer, but their words have made no lasting impression upon the public mind. As early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, Joachim von Watt, the reformer of St. Gall, better known

under his Latinized name Vadianus, had spoken of the subject in his Chronicle of the Abbots of the Monastery of St. Gall: "Of these three lands" (meaning the present cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden) "they tell strange things in regard to their age and origin. . . . I suspect that much is fabled, and some, again, may not be likened to the truth." In 1607, the writer François Guilliman, of Fribourg, who added some new details to the story of William Tell in his history De Rebus Helvetiorum, makes this surprising confession in a letter to a friend: “After having maturely pondered the matter, I consider the whole thing a mere fable, especially as I have not yet been able to discover a writer or chronicler, more than a century old, who mentions it. All this seems to have been invented to nourish hatred against Austria. The people of Uri are not agreed amongst themselves in regard to the place where William Tell lived; they can give no information in regard to his family or his descendants." Again, in 1754, Voltaire said in his Annales de l'Empire, "L'histoire de la pomme est bien suspecte;" and in his Essai sur les Mœurs, "Il semble qu'on ait cru devoir orner d'une fable le berceau de la liberté helvétique." A momentary sensation was created in 1760 by a pamphlet entitled Der Wilhelm Tell, Ein Dänisches Mährgen, which was ordered publicly to be burned by the hangman of canton Uri, so bitter had the controversy become. The author was a certain Uriel Freudenberger, pastor at Ligerz, on the Lake of Bienne, and his attack elicited a sharp retort from Felix Balthazar, of Lucerne, a Défense de Guillaume Tell. Calm, however, was restored for a time by the authoritative declarations of two noted historians, Emmanuel von Haller and Johannes von Müller, in favor of the traditional hero, although Müller, like Guilliman, privately acknowledged to a friend that he had serious doubts of the truth of what he wrote. Even Schil

ler, whose play appeared in 1804, was constrained to admit that in the tradition William Tell had really no part in founding the Confederation, and he was consequently obliged to resort to such expedients as his art suggested in order to make his hero the central figure of the struggle against Austria.

The subject finally came up again when Joseph Eutych Kopp submitted it to a thorough investigation by searching the records of the three cantons, and publishing his results in his Urkunden zur Geschichte der Eidgenössischen Bünde (1835-1857), his Reichsgeschichte (1845-1858), and his Geschichtsblätter aus der Schweiz 1853.

To understand the commotion produced in Switzerland by Kopp's exposé, we must try to imagine what would be the result in the United States if George Washington were suddenly declared to be a legendary character. Every one sided for or against the truth of the tradition; no one could remain neutral; but from that day to this the impression has gradually forced itself upon the minds of all who have looked into the question that Kopp was in the main right, and that, whatever modifications new discoveries may make necessary in the sweeping judgment which that historian pronounced, William Tell can never again be looked upon as the founder of the Swiss Confederation.

Our confidence in the accuracy of the tradition is first shaken by the fact that the great archer is not mentioned by a single writer of the period in which he is supposed to have lived, or even the faintest allusion made to him in the records of that day. To begin with, therefore, we are warranted in doubting his historical importance, if he could be so completely ignored by his contemporaries. The battle of Morgarten, in 1315, was the baptismal day of the young Confederation, but none of the chroniclers who describe this event and the incidents attending it have a word

to say of a William Tell, or of any one who could be mistaken for him. On the other hand, the whole tenor of these writings and of the documents of the period is opposed to the tradition. The impression we derive from them is that the Swiss gained their independence after a long-continued struggle, not by a sudden rising, and through the efforts of the whole people, not at the instigation of one man. In 1420, a Konrad Justinger, of Berne, in writing the annals of his native city, touched upon the origin of the Confederation, but even he says nothing about William Tell; nor does Felix Hemmerlein, of Zürich, writing upon the same subject in 1450.

In fact, it is not till about 1477, more than a century and a half after William Tell was supposed to have lived, that we can find any reference made to him. At that date an unknown poet brought out a ballad entitled Song of the Origin of the Confederation, in twenty-nine stanzas, nine of which seem from internal evidence to antedate 1474. The following translation of the four stanzas which bear upon the subject, the first to my knowledge which has appeared in English, has been made without any attempt at metrical correctness, the original being extremely rough and in dialect:

"Now listen well, dear sirs,

How the league at first arose,
Nor let yourselves be wearied;
How one from his own son
An apple from the head
Had with his hands to shoot.

"The bailiff spake to William Tell: 'Now look thee that thy skill fail not, And hear my speech with care: Hit thou it not at the first shot, Forsooth it bodes thee little good, And costeth thee thy life.'

"Then prayed he God both day and night
He might at first the apple hit;
It would provoke them much!
He had the luck, by the power of God,
That he with all his art

So skillfully could shoot.

Subsequent verses describe how an uproar ensues, in which Tell enumerates the evil deeds of the bailiffs. These are then expelled, and young and old unite in a loyal league. It will be noticed, however, that there is no mention of the name Gessler, of a hat set upon a pole, of the leap at the Tellsplatte, or of the murder of the bailiff at Küssnacht: these details appear in another version, dating from almost the same time.

Between 1467 and 1474, a notary at Sarnen, in the canton of Unterwalden, transcribed a number of traditions in the form of a chronicle into a collection of documents, known as The White Book on account of the color of its parchment binding. Here the story of William Tell is told as follows, in a style of archaic simplicity which is not without a certain charm of its own: "Now it happened one day that the bailiff, Gesler, went to Ure [canton of Uri], and took it into his head and put up a pole under the limetree in Ure, and set up a hat upon the pole, and had a servant near it, and made a command whoever passed by there he should bow before the hat, as though the lord were there; and he who did it not, him he would punish and cause to repent heavily, and the servant was to watch and tell of such an one. Now there was there an honest man called Thall; he had also sworn with Stoupacher and his fellows [a reference to a conspiracy previously described in The White Book]. Now he went rather often to and fro before it. The servant who watched by the hat accused him to the lord. The lord went and had Tall sent, and asked him why he was not obedient to his bidding, and do as he was bidden. Tall spake It happened without malice, for I did not know that it would vex your

:

Grace so highly; for were I witty, then were I called something else, and not the Tall' [the Fool, a pun upon his name 1]. Now Tall was a good archer; he had also pretty children. These the lord sent for, and forced Tall with his servants that Tall must shoot an apple from the head of one of his children; for the lord set the apple upon the child's head. Now Tall saw well that he was mastered, and took an arrow and put it into his quiver; the other arrow he took in his hand, and stretched his crossbow, and prayed God that he might save his child, and shot the apple from the child's head. The lord liked this well, and asked him what he meant by it [that he had put an arrow in his quiver]. He answered him, and would gladly have said no more [an obscure passage; the original is hett es gern jm besten ver Rett]. The lord would not leave off; he wanted to know what he meant by it. Tall feared the lord, and was afraid he I would kill him. The lord understood

his fear and spake : Tell me the truth; I will make thy life safe, and not kill thee.' Then spake Tall: Since you have promised me, I will tell you the truth, and it is true: had the shot failed me, so that I had shot my child, I had shot the arrow into you or one of your men.'

Then spake the lord: 'Since now this is so, it is true I have promised thee not to kill thee;' and had him bound, and said he would put him into a place where he would never more see sun or moon." The account goes on to describe how Tall, in being taken down the lake in a boat, makes his escape at the Tellsplatte, and later shoots Gessler in the Hohle Gasse at Küssnacht; but he is not mentioned as taking part in the league afterwards made; much less does he figure as the founder of the Confederation.

Now the question arises, How can we account for the sudden appearance of William Tell, both in the Song of the 1 Root dalen, to act childishly.

Origin of the Confederation and in The White Book of Sarnen, after the writers of a century and a half had passed him over in complete silence?

As regards the simple story of the shot, apart altogether from its historical application, there can be no doubt now, after the investigations which have been made in all directions, that we have to do here with a widespread household myth, belonging equally to many branches of the Germanic family, but preserved with special tenacity in the retired and conservative valley of Uri. The same legend occurs in various parts of northern and central Europe, in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Holstein, on the Middle Rhine, and with another motive in the English ballad of William of Cloudesly. There is always a skillful archer who is punished by being made to shoot an object from his child's head, and who in almost every case reserves an arrow with which to slay the tyrant in case of failure. The names of the men and places and the local coloring of course vary in the different versions, but the structure of the story remains the same in all. The one which bears probably the greatest resemblance to that of William Tell is to be found in a Danish history, Gesta Danorum, written by Saxo, surnamed Grammaticus, in the twelfth century. Here the anecdote is told of one Toko, or Toki, and King Harald Bluetooth (936-986). Making due allowance for the great difference between the style of this work, which is in pompous Latin, and the rude and fresh dialect of The White Book of Sarnen, the resemblance is certainly very striking.

Says Saxo Grammaticus: "Nor ought what follows to be enveloped in silence. Toko, who had for some time been in the king's service, had by his deeds, surpassing those of his comrades, made enemies of his virtues. One day, when he had drunk too much, he boasted to those who sat at table with him that his skill in archery was such that with the first

shot of an arrow he could hit the small

est apple set on the top of a stick at a considerable distance. His detractors, hearing this, lost no time in conveying what he had said to the king. But the wickedness of this monarch soon transformed the confidence of the father to the jeopardy of the son; for he ordered the dearest pledge of his life to stand in place of the stick, from whom if the utterer of the boast did not at his first shot strike down the apple, he should with his head pay the penalty of having made an idle boast. The command of the king urged the soldier to do this, which was so much more than he had undertaken, the detracting artifices of the others having taken advantage of words. spoken when he was hardly sober. As soon as the boy was led forward, Toko carefully admonished him to receive the whir of the arrow as calmly as possible, with attentive ears, and without moving his head, lest by a slight motion of the body he should frustrate the experience of his well-tried skill. He also made him stand with his back towards him, lest he should be frightened at the sight of the arrow. Then he drew three arrows from his quiver, and the very first he shot struck the proposed mark. Toko being asked by the king why he had so many more arrows out of his quiver, when he was to make but one trial with his bow, 'That I might avenge on thee,' he replied, the error of the first by the points of the others, lest my innocence might happen to be afflicted and thy injustice go unpunished.'" Afterwards, during a rebellion of the Danes against Harald, Toko slays him with an arrow in a forest.

1

Observe, also, the truly remarkable likeness of the old English ballad of William of Cloudesly to the Song of the Origin of the Confederation, both as regards sense and style. I quote a few of the more striking verses only, in

1 Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.

"Thus Clowdesle clefte the apple in two, That many a man it se;

'Ouer goddes forbode,' sayd the kynge,

"That thou sholdest shote at me!'"' 2

Two explanations are possible in view of this similarity: either the author of the ballad of Tell and the notary of Sarnen copied the account of Saxo Grammaticus, written three centuries before, at the same time making them conform to Swiss surroundings, or the Danish and Swiss writers simply put down a legend current amongst their own people, derived from some common, older source, from which proceeded also the Icelandic, Norwegian, and other versions. This latter solution seems to me preferable. Northern Switzerland was invaded by the German tribe of the Alamanni at the fall of the Roman Empire, and the present cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were colonized by them somewhat later. William Tell is probably the Alamannian counterpart of Toko the Dane. Moreover, both the ballad and The White Book reveal the ring of genuine folk-lore; they do not betray the touch of the copyist; so that we need not necessarily question the good faith of the authors who wrote them down. But whatever explanation be accepted, it is now established that William Tell is no more exclusively Swiss than he is Icelandic.

2 Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Part V. p. 29.