Myths and Myth-Makers | Page 5

more than
he had promised, and what he had said, reported, by the tongues of
slanderers, bound him to accomplish what he had NOT said. Yet did
not his sterling courage, though caught in the snare of slander, suffer
him to lay aside his firmness of heart; nay, he accepted the trial the
more readily because it was hard. So Palnatoki warned the boy urgently
when he took his stand to await the coming of the hurtling arrow with
calm ears and unbent head, lest, by a slight turn of his body, he should
defeat the practised skill of the bowman; and, taking further counsel to
prevent his fear, he turned away his face, lest he should be scared at the
sight of the weapon. Then, taking three arrows from the quiver, he
struck the mark given him with the first he fitted to the string. . . . . But
Palnatoki, when asked by the king why he had taken more arrows from
the quiver, when it had been settled that he should only try the fortune
of the bow ONCE, made answer, 'That I might avenge on thee the
swerving of the first by the points of the rest, lest perchance my
innocence might have been punished, while your violence escaped
scot-free.' "[2]
[2] Saxo Grammaticus, Bk. X. p. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576.
This ruthless king is none other than the famous Harold Blue-tooth, and
the occurrence is placed by Saxo in the year 950. But the story appears
not only in Denmark, but in Fingland, in Norway, in Finland and
Russia, and in Persia, and there is some reason for supposing that it was
known in India. In Norway we have the adventures of Pansa the
Splay-footed, and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold Hardrada, who
invaded England in 1066. In Iceland there is the kindred legend of Egil
brother of Wayland Smith, the Norse Vulcan. In England there is the
ballad of William of Cloudeslee, which supplied Scott with many
details of the archery scene in "Ivanhoe." Here, says the dauntless

bowman,
"I have a sonne seven years old; Hee is to me full deere; I will tye him
to a stake-- All shall see him that bee here-- And lay an apple upon his
head, And goe six paces him froe, And I myself with a broad arrowe
Shall cleave the apple in towe."
In the Malleus Maleficarum a similar story is told Puncher, a famous
magician on the Upper Rhine. The great ethnologist Castren dug up the
same legend in Finland. It is common, as Dr. Dasent observes, to the
Turks and Mongolians; "and a legend of the wild Samoyeds, who never
heard of Tell or saw a book in their lives relates it, chapter and verse, of
one of their marksmen." Finally, in the Persian poem of Farid-Uddin
Attar, born in 1119, we read a story of a prince who shoots an apple
from the head of a beloved page. In all these stories, names and motives
of course differ; but all contain the same essential incidents. It is
always an unerring archer who, at the capricious command of a tyrant,
shoots from the head of some one dear to him a small object, be it an
apple, a nut, or a piece of coin. The archer always provides himself
with a second arrow, and, when questioned as to the use he intended to
make of his extra weapon, the invariable reply is, "To kill thee, tyrant,
had I slain my son." Now, when a marvellous occurrence is said to
have happened everywhere, we may feel sure that it never happened
anywhere. Popular fancies propagate themselves indefinitely, but
historical events, especially the striking and dramatic ones, are rarely
repeated. The facts here collected lead inevitably to the conclusion that
the Tell myth was known, in its general features, to our Aryan
ancestors, before ever they left their primitive dwelling-place in Central
Asia.
It may, indeed, be urged that some one of these wonderful marksmen
may really have existed and have performed the feat recorded in the
legend; and that his true story, carried about by hearsay tradition from
one country to another and from age to age, may have formed the
theme for all the variations above mentioned, just as the fables of La
Fontaine were patterned after those of AEsop and Phaedrus, and just as
many of Chaucer's tales were consciously adopted from Boccaccio. No

doubt there has been a good deal of borrowing and lending among the
legends of different peoples, as well as among the words of different
languages; and possibly even some picturesque fragment of early
history may have now and then been carried about the world in this
manner. But as the philologist can with almost unerring certainty
distinguish between