Tell, WILLIAM, was, according to Swiss tradition, a countryman of Burglen in Uri, who early in the 14th century rescued his native district from the tyranny of Austria. The following is the generally accepted version of the story. Albert II., Duke of Austria and German emperor, was in 1307 striving to annex the Forest Cantons to his immediate possessions. Hermann Gessler, his vogt or steward, perpetrated atrocious cruelties on the inhabitants. Werner Stauffacher of Schwyz, Walter Fürst of Uri, father-in-law of Tell, and Arnold Melchthal of Unterwalden met on the Rütli Meadow, 7th November 1307, and solemnly swore they would expel their oppressors before the following New-year's Day. Gessler had placed the ducal hat of Austria on a pole in the market-place of Altorf and intimated that any one who passed it without uncovering would be punished without mercy. Tell and his boy failed to do reverence to the hat, and were sentenced to be put to death unless Tell, who was a famous bowman, could hit an apple placed on his son's head. Tell performed the feat. 'What,' asked Gessler, 'would you have done with the second arrow in your bow?' 'Shot you if I had killed my child,' was the reply. Tell was bound and thrown into a boat to be taken with Gessler and his men to the Castle of Küssnacht, the residence of the tyrant. A frightful storm burst forth. Tell alone could save the party. He was unbound and pulled the boat to a rocky ledge, 'Tell's Platte;' he there sprang on shore and disappeared. The tyrant landed and was passing through a defile, the 'Hohle Gasse' near Küssnacht, when Tell, who lay in ambush, shot him through the heart. A rising followed, and wars with Austria, which ended in the independence of Switzerland.
The story was told as true by Johannes von Müller in his great history of Switzerland. Schiller made it the subject of his greatest drama and Rossini of his best opera—and 'the patriot Tell' became the best-known hero the world had seen. Doubts, however, had been expressed as to the very existence of Tell. Already in 1754 Voltaire had cast a characteristic sneer at 'the apple story,' and in 1760 Freudenberger, a Bernese Protestant clergyman, published a pamphlet, Tell, a Danish Fable, pointing out that the story of the apple is the Scandinavian fable of Tolo. His work was condemned by the government of Uri and burned by the common hangman. The doubts were not extinguished. The comparative mythologists showed that the Tell story was merely a Scandinavian form of an old Indo-Germanic myth (see Ideler, Die Sage vom Schusse des Tell, 1826). An excellent parallel is that in our own north-country ballad, 'Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough,' and William of Cloudesley, printed in Percy's Reliques. The 'master-shot' indeed is not the property alone of Aryan folklore, but is found among Samoyeds, Turks, and Mongolians alike. It was further found that Tell is first mentioned in 1470 in a ballad, between 1482 and 1488 in the Chronicle of M. Russ of Lucerne, and in 1511 in a play acted in Uri. The first makes Tell the hero of the apple story and the rising which followed. Russ and the Uri play take no notice of the apple story, but refer to the boat scene and the atrocities of the bailiffs. They make Tell the hero of the revolution. A MS. known as the White Book of Sarnen first combined the apple story and the atrocities. It makes the Rütli oath the pivot of events, and Stauffacher, not Tell, the hero. Tschudi in his Swiss Chronicle (1572) first melted all these incidents into a consistent narrative. He fixed the date of the Tell rising at 1407, and Von Müller, warned by the fate of Freudenberger, with palpable misgivings told the tale as true history (see Vischer, Die Sage von der Befreiung der Waldstädte, 1867). There is no trace of Tell to be found in contemporary records. His name did not appear where it should have done in lists connected with the landesgemeinden of the period; in the register of deaths at Schaddorf it had been forged. The story that the Tell chapel on Tell's Platte was built by a landesgemeinde held in 1388 at which 114 men were present who had known Tell was first heard of in 1759. The Tell chapels at Burglen and the Hohle Gasse, represented as existing since the 14th century, belong to the 16th. Professor J. E. Kopp of Lucerne has shown that the date of the Tell rising is inconsistent with the history of the Forest Cantons. There was then no grievance against Albert II., who was a severe but just ruler and never guilty of any atrocity (see Kopp, Urkunden zur Geschichte der Eidgenössischen Bund, 1851). A complete record has been published of all the occupants of Küssnacht from 1250 to 1513. Among them there is no Gessler (see Rochholtz, Tell und Gessler in Sage und Geschichte, 1876). In short, there is no truth in any incident of the Tell legend. Although inconsistent with history, they, however, are not yet generally recognised as mythical. The people of the Forest Cantons cling even to the apple story. In 1890 a ferment was raised in Uri by the publication of a school history of Switzerland which did not mention Tell and the Rütli oath. Excellent French works on general history still represent all the incidents as historical, expressing a mere doubt as to the apple story; this is justified in a long article in the Nouvelle Revue of July 1891. It attributes disbelief in Tell to a conspiracy of German savants actuated by sycophancy, jealousy, and antipathy to liberal ideas. At the sex-centenary of Swiss independence celebrated in August 1891 truth and fiction were ingeniously blended, and the patriots of Uri were compensated for the scepticism of 'German professors' by the abiding faith of newspaper correspondents. See Albert Rilliet, Les Origines de la Confédération Suisse, Histoire et Légende (1868).