William Augustus Brevoort Coolidge

“ TELL.⁠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 considered together. ”

“ Many details are given of the oppressions of the bailiffs: we hear of Gessler, of the meeting of Stoupacher of Schwyz, Fürst of Uri, and a man of Nidwald at the Rütli, — in fact, the usual version of the legend. To give an instance of tyranny in Uri, the author tells us the story of the refusal of "der Thäll" to do reverence to the hat placed on a pole, of his feat of skill, and of his shooting the bailiff, Gessler, from behind a bush in the "hollow way" near Küssnacht. Tell is represented as being one of those who swore at the Rütli to drive out the oppressors ”

“ Since then many writers have worked in the same direction. Vischer (1867) has carefully traced out the successive steps in the growth of the legend, and Rochholz (1877) has worked out the real history of Gessler as shown in authentic documents. The general result 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 distorted reminiscences of the events of 1245-47, in which the names of many real persons have been inserted and many unauthenticated acts attributed to them. ”