[17]. Such as the penalty for missing, as above said; or Tell’s shooting at a hundred and twenty paces, and bearing Cloudesly’s name, William. If the coincidence as to the distance should be held to be very important, I, for one, should have no objection to admitting that this part of the ballad may be derived from the Tell story.
J. Grimm remarked in 1813, Gedanken über Mythos, Epos und Geschichte (Kleinere Schriften, IV, 77), that the similarity of the names Tell, Bell, Velent, Bellerophon (see a little further on, p. 21), could hardly fail to strike even a superficial observer, and also pointed to the identity of Tell’s and Cloudesly’s Christian name. In his Deutsche Mythologie, I, 317, ed. 1875, it is simply said that the surname Bell, as well as Cloudesly’s Christian name, is suggestive of William Tell.
[18]. The poet is Mohammed ben Ibrahim, 1119–c. 1230, and he bore the honorary title of Furîd Uddîn (Pearl of Religion), and the sobriquet of Attâr, perfumer. The title of the poem is The Language of Birds. Garcin de Tassy, La Poésie Philosophique et Religieuse chez les Persans, Extrait de la Revue Contemporaine, t. xxiv, pp. 4, 35. “Nur den Apfel treffen wir hier.... Es bleibt also weiter nichts übrig als anzunehmen dass die persische Sage ... in die grauesten Urzeiten des arischen Alterthums hinaufreichen muss.” (Pfannenschmid, in Germania, X, 26 f.) A rapid inference.
[19]. Eindriði also had accomplished a harder shot before he tried the chessman. But Hemingr, having done what was thought a masterly thing in cleaving a nut, is compelled to knock the same nut, shooting at the same distance, from his brother’s head.
[20]. Das Inland, No 39, p. 630, cited by Rochholz, Tell und Gessler, p. 40 f. Gerhard’s Wila, I, 147 f, cited by Rochholz, p. 39 f. Eustathius to Iliad, xii, 101, first cited by Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (who says, “Es stimmt auch theilweise,” p. 317, ed. 1875); by others later.
[21]. To Virgil, Ecl. v, 11, cited by Ideler, Die Sage von dem Schuss des Tell, p. 59, note 3.
[22]. Hisely, Recherches Critiques sur l’Histoire de Guillaume Tell, p. 590.
[23]. Pfannenschmid, in Germania, X, 25; Rochholz, Tell und Gessler, p. 41 f.
[24]. T. B. Thorpe, Reminiscences of the Mississippi, in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, XII, 30. A story is there related of a famous Mike Fink’s striking an apple from a man’s head by shooting between it and the skull, like the Scandinavian marksmen. In Captain Mayne Reid’s Scalp Hunters, or Romantic Adventures in Northern Mexico, ch. 22, we are told of an Indian’s shooting a prairie-gourd from the head of his sister, which may or may not be an invention. The title of the chapter is A Feat à la Tell, and this may perhaps be the only foundation for an assertion that the Tell story had been found in Mexico; at least, inquiries have not brought to light any other.
[25]. For the interpretation which has been put upon the Tell story, see, among many, Pfannenschmid, in Germania, X, 1–40; Rochholz, Tell und Gessler, in Sage und Geschichte.