ernor being on the little island of
Schwanan, in the lake of Lowerz, who seduced a maid of Schwyz, and was
killed by her brothers. Then there was another person, strictly
historical, Knight Eppo, of Kuesnach, who, while acting as bailiff for
the Duke of Austria, put down two revolts of the inhabitants in his
district, one in 1284 and another in 1302. Finally, there was the tyrant
bailiff mentioned in the ballad of Tell, who, by the way, a chronicler,
writing in 1510, calls, not Gessler, but the Count of Seedorf. These
three persons were combined, and the result was named Gessler."

Moreover, it is extremely doubtful whether the green plateau of the
Ruetli below Seelisberg, and some six hundred and fifty feet above the
lake, with its miraculous springs, ever witnessed the patriotic
gathering of the thirty-three peasants who, tradition asserts, there
formed the league against Austrian rule, or heard the solemn oath they
and their leaders, Stauffacher, Fuerst, and Arnold, mutually swore.

In all probability the legend of Tell and the apple originated in
Scandinavia, and was brought by the Alemanni into Switzerland; as into
other lands. Saxo Grammaticus, in the _Withina Saga_, places the scene
of a very similar story in that country, some three hundred years before
the appearance of the Swiss version, and tells of a certain Danish king
named Harold, the counterpart of Gessler, and one Toki, who played the
same _role_ enacted by Tell. Like legends are also related of Olaf,
Eindridi, and an almost identical one to that of William Tell of Egil,
who, being ordered by King Nidung to shoot an apple off the head of the
son of the former, took two arrows from his quiver and prepared to obey.
On the King asking why he had selected two arrows, Egil replied, "To
shoot thee, tyrant, with the second, should the first fail."

Neither are similar narratives absent from the legends of other
countries. Thus Reginald Scott says: "Puncher shot a penny on his son's
head, and made ready another arrow to have slain the Duke of Rengrave,
who commanded it." So also similar incidents occur in the tales of Adam
Bell, _Clym of the Clough_, and William of Claudeslie in the _Percy
Ballads_, and in the legends of many places in Northern Europe. On this
subject Sir Francis Adams mentions, in a note to his valuable book on
the Swiss Confederation, that a well-known citizen of Berne, in answer
to his inquiry as to whether Tell ever existed, replied: "Not