Myths and Dreams

by Edward Clodd

With ourselves it is the burden of the ballad of William of Cloudeslee, where the brave archer says:—

“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 arroe
Shall cleave the apple in towe.”

In the Malleus Maleficarum Puncher, a magician on the Upper Rhine, is required to shoot a coin from off a lad’s head; while, travelling eastwards as far as Persia, we find the Tell myth as an incident in the poem Mantic Ultraïr, a work of the twelfth century.

Thus far the variants of the legend found among Aryan peoples have been summarised, and it is tempting to base upon this diffusion of a common incident a theory of its origin among the ancestors of the Swiss and the Norseman, the Persian and the Icelander. But it is found among non-Aryans also. The ethnologist, Castrén, whose researches in Finland have secured a valuable mass of fast-perishing materials, obtained this tale in the village of Ultuwa. “A fight took place between some freebooters and the inhabitants of the village of Alajärai. The robbers plundered every house, and carried off amongst their captives an old man. As they proceeded with their spoils along the strand of the lake a lad of twelve years old appeared from among the reeds on the opposite bank, armed with a bow and amply provided with arrows; he threatened to shoot down the captors unless the old man, his father, was restored to him. The robbers mockingly replied that the aged man would be given to him if he could shoot an apple off his head. The boy accepted the challenge, pierced the apple and freed his father.” Among a people in close contact with an Aryan race as the Finns are in contact with both Swedes and Russians, the main incident of the Tell story may easily have been woven into their native tales. But in reference to other non-Aryan races Sir George Dasent, who has treated of the diffusion of the Tell story very fully in the Introduction to his Popular Tales from the Norse (a reprint of which would be a boon to students of folk-lore), says that it is common to the Turks and Mongolians, and a legend of the wild Samoyedes, who never heard of Tell or saw a book in their lives, relates it, chapter and verse, of one of their marksmen. What shall we say, then, but that the story of this bold mastershot was prominent amongst many tribes and races, and that it only crystallised itself round the great name of Tell by that process of attraction which invariably leads a grateful people to throw such mythic wreaths, such garlands of bold deeds of precious memory, around the brow of its darling champion. Of course the solar mythologists see in Tell the sun or cloud deity; in his bow the storm-cloud or the iris; and in his arrows the sun-rays or lightning darts.

This is a question which we may leave to the champions concerned to settle. Apart from the evidence of the survival of legend in history, and the lesson of caution in accepting any ancient record as gospel which we should learn therefrom, it is the human element in the venerable tale which interests us most.

Remote in time, far away in place, as is its origin, it moves us yet. The ennobling qualities incarnated in some hero (whether he be real or ideal matters not) meet with admiring response in the primitive listeners to the story, else it would have been speedily forgotten. Thus does it retain for us witness to the underlying oneness of the human heart beneath all surface differences.

Widespread as a myth may be, it takes depth of root according to the more or less congenial soil where it is dropped. That about Tell found favourable home in the uplands and the free air of Switzerland; with us S. George, falling on times of chivalry, had abiding place, as also, less rugged of type than the Swiss marksman, had Arthur, the “Blameless King,” who, if he ever existed, is smothered in overgrowth of legends both native and imported.

For such cycle of tales as gathered round the name of Arthur, and on which our youthhood was nourished, is as mythical as the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus. Modern criticism and research have thoroughly sifted the legendary from the true, and if the past remains vague and shadowy, we at least know how far the horizon of certainty extends. The criticism has made short work of the romancing chronicles which so long did duty for sober history, and has shown that no accurate knowledge of the sequence of events is obtainable until late in the period of the English invasions. Save in scattered hints here and there, we are quite in the dark as to the condition of this island during the Roman occupation, whilst for anything that is known of times prior to this, called for convenience “pre-historic,” we are dependent upon unwritten records preserved in tombs and mounds. The information gathered from these has given us some clue to what manner of men they were who confronted the first Aryan immigrants, and, enriched by researches of the ethnologist and philologist, enabled us to trace the movements of races westwards, until we find old and new commingled as one English-speaking folk.

All or any of which could not be known to the earlier chroniclers. When Geoffry of Monmouth set forth the glory and renown of Arthur and his Court he recorded and embellished traditions six hundred years old, without thought of weighing the evidence or questioning the credibility of the transmitters. Whether there was a king of that name who ruled over the Silures, and around whom the remnant of brave Kelts rallied in their final struggle against the invading hordes, and who, wounded in battle, died at Glastonbury, and was buried, or rather sleeps, as the legend has it, in the Vale of Avilion, “hath been,” as Milton says, “doubted heretofore, and may again, with good reason, for the Monk of Malmesbury and others, whose credit hath swayed most with the learned sort, we may well perceive to have known no more of this Arthur nor of his doings than we now living.”[55]

In the group of legends both of the Old and New World, which, the solar theorists tell us, symbolise the long sleep of winter before the sweet awakening of the spring, Arthur of course has place. “Men said he was not dead, but by the will of our Lord Jesus Christ was in another place, and men say that he will come again ... that there is written on his tomb this verse: