TELL, WILLIAM. The story of William Tell's skill in shooting at and striking the apple which had been placed on the head of his little son by order of Gessler, the tyrannical Austrian bailiff of Uri, is so closely bound up with the legendary history of the origin of the Swiss Confederation that they must be con sidered together. Both appear first in the i 5th century, probably as results of the war for the Toggenburg inheritance ; for the intense hatred of Austria, increased by her support of the claims of Zurich, favoured the circulation of stories which assumed that Swiss freedom was of immemorial antiquity, while, as the war was largely a struggle between the civic and rural elements in the Confederation, the notion that the (rural) Schwyzers were of Scandinavian descent at once separated them from and raised them above the German inhabitants of the towns.
The Tell story is first found in a ballad the first nine stanzas of which (containing the story) were certainly written before 1474. It is probably to this ballad that Melchior Russ of Lucerne (who began his Chronicle in 1482) refers when he excuses himself from giving the story. He narrates how Tell then stirred up his friends against the governor, who seized him and took him by boat to his castle on lake Lugano. A storm arose, and Tell, on account of his great strength, was given the rudder, on his promise to bring the boat to land. He steers it towards a shelf of rock, called in Russ's time Tell's Platte, springs on shore, shoots the bailiff dead with his cross bow, and returning to Uri, stirs up the strife which ended in the battle of Morgarten. In these two accounts, which form the basis of the Uri version of the origin of the Con federation, it is Tell who is the leader. We first hear of the cruelties of the Austrian bailiffs in the Forest districts in the Bernese Chronicle of Conrad Justinger (1420), who makes no allusion to Tell. The Tell story and the "atrocities" story are first found combined in a ms. known as the White Book of Semen. They are contained in a short chronicle written between 1467 and 1476, probably about 1470, and based on oral tradition.
The task of smoothing away inconsistencies and rounding off the tale, was accomplished by Giles Tschudi (q.v.), whose re cension was closely followed by Johannes von Muller in his History of the Confederation (1780). The final recension of Tschudi's Chronicle which differs in many particulars from the original draft preserved at Zurich, tells how Albert of Austria, in order to deprive the Forest lands of their ancient freedom, sent bailiffs (among them Gessler) to Uri and Schwyz. Their tyranny resulted in a rising, planned at the Riitli, on Nov. 8, 1307, and led by Werner von Stauffacher of Schwyz, Walter Furst of Uri, Arnold von Melchthal in Unterwalden, each with ten companions, among whom was William Tell, to expel the oppressors. On Nov. 18 the Tell incident takes place (described according to the White Book version), and on Jan. 1, 1308 the
general rising. Tschudi thus finally settled the date, which had before varied from 126o to 1334. He distorts the historical cir cumstances. In his first draft he speaks of the bailiff as Gryssler —the usual name up to his time, except in the White Book and in Stumpff's Chronicle of 1548—but in his final recension he calls him Gessler, knowing that this was a real name. Later writers added a few more particulars. Johannes von Miiller (1780) de scribed the oath at the Rtitli by the three (Tell not being counted in), and threw Tschudi's version into a literary form. Schiller's play (1804) gave the tale a world-wide renown.
The general result of the researches of various students, J. E. Kopp, Vischer, Rochholz and others, has been to show that a mythological marksman and an impossible bailiff bearing the name of a real family have been joined with confused and dis torted reminiscences of the events of in which the names of many real persons have been inserted and many un authenticated acts attributed to them. Th. von Liebenau has, however, shown (in an article reprinted from the Katholische Schweizerblatter in the Bollettino Storico della Svizzera Italiana for 1899) that in 1283 the Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg gave the right of receiving the tolls for escort over the St. Gotthard Pass to his sons, the dukes of Austria. The levying of these tolls gave rise to various disputes between the men of Uri and the bailiffs of the dukes of Austria, and by 1319 (if not already in 1309) the claim to levy them was silently given up. These facts show (what could not hitherto be proved) that at the time when legend places the rising of Uri, Tell exploit, etc., the dukes of Austria really had disputes with Uri.
The alleged proofs of the existence of a real William Tell in Uri in the 14th century break down hopelessly. (I) The entries in the parish registers are forged. (2) As to the Tell chapels— (a) that in the "hollow way" near KUssnacht was not known to Melchior Russ and is first mentioned by Tschudi (1572). (b) That on Tell's Platte is first mentioned in 1504. The document which alleges that this chapel was built by order of a "lands gemeinde" held in 1388, at which 114 men were present who had been personally acquainted with Tell, was never heard of till 1759. The procession in boats to the place where the chapel stands may be very old, but is not connected with Tell till about 1582. (c) The chapel at BUrglen is known to have been founded in 1582.
In general see two excellent works by Franz Heinemann, Tell Iconographie, Lucerne, 1902 (reproductions, with text, of the chief representations of Tell in art from 1507 onwards), and Tell Bibliographie (including that of Schiller's play), published in 1908 at Bern. See also W. Vischer, Die Sage von der Befreiung der Waldstlitte (Leipzig, 1867) ; E. L. Rochholz, Tell and Gessler, with a volume of documents 1250-1513 (Heilbronn, 1877) ; and P. Lang, Die Schweiz. Tells/siele (1924). (W. A. B. C.; X.)