William Tell

The tradition & historical record

William Tell (German: Wilhelm Tell, pronounced [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈtɛl] ; French: Guillaume Tell; Italian: Guglielmo Tell(o); Romansh: Guglielm Tell) is a legendary folk hero of Switzerland. He is known for shooting an apple off his son's head. According to the legend, Tell was an expert mountain climber and marksman with a crossbow who assassinated Albrecht Gessler, a tyrannical reeve of the Austrian dukes of the House of Habsburg positioned in Altdorf, in the canton of Uri. Tell's defiance and tyrannicide encouraged the population to open rebellion and to make a pact against the foreign rulers with neighbouring Schwyz and Unterwalden, marking the foundation of the Swiss Confederacy, of which Tell is consequently considered the father. Set in the early 14th century (traditional date 1307, during the rule of Albert of Habsburg), the first written records of the legend date to the latter part of the 15th century, when the Swiss Confederacy was gaining military and political influence. Tell is a central figure in Swiss national historiography, along with Arnold von Winkelried, the hero of Sempach (1386). He was important as a symbol during the formative stage of modern Switzerland in the 19th century, known as the period of Restoration and Regeneration, as well as in the wider history of 18th- to 19th-century Europe as a symbol of resistance against aristocratic rule, especially in the Revolutions of 1848 against the House of Habsburg, which had ruled Austria for centuries. ¹

The first reference to Tell, without a specified given name, appears in the White Book of Sarnen (German: Weisses Buch von Sarnen). This volume was written in 1474 by Hans Schriber, state secretary (Landschreiber) of Obwalden. It mentions the Rütli Oath (Rütlischwur) and names Tell as one of the conspirators (Eidgenossen) of the Rütli, whose heroic tyrannicide triggered the Burgenbruch rebellion. An equally early account of Tell is found in the Tellenlied, a song composed in the 1470s, with its oldest extant manuscript copy dating to 1501. The song begins with the Tell legend, which it presents as the origin of the Confederacy, calling Tell the "first confederate". The narrative includes Tell's apple shot, his preparation of a second arrow to shoot Gessler, and his escape, but it does not mention any assassination of Gessler. The text then enumerates the cantons of the Confederacy, and says it was expanded with "current events" during the course of the Burgundy Wars, ending with the death of Charles the Bold in 1477. Aegidius Tschudi of Glarus, writing c. 1570, presents an extended version of the legend. Based on the account in the White Book, Tschudi added further detail. Tschudi is known to have habitually "fleshed out" his sources, so that all detail from Tschudi not found in the earlier accounts may be suspected of being Tschudi's invention. Such additional detail includes Tell's given name Wilhelm, and his being a native of Bürglen, Uri in the Schächental, the precise date of the apple-shot, given as 18 November 1307, as well as the account of Tell's death in 1354. It is Tschudi's version that became influential in early modern Switzerland and entered public consciousness as the "William Tell" legend. ¹

There are a number of sources for the Tell legend later than the earliest account in the White Book of Sarnen but earlier than Tschudi's version of c. 1570. These include the account in the chronicle of Melchior Russ from Lucerne. Dated to 1482, this is an incoherent compilation of older writings, including the Song of the Founding of the Confederation, Conrad Justinger's Bernese Chronicle, and the Chronicle of the State of Bern (in German, Chronik der Stadt Bern). Another early account is in Petermann Etterlin's Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation (Kronika von der loblichen Eydtgenossenschaft) of 1507, the earliest printed version of the Tell story. The Chronicon Helveticum was compiled by Tschudi in the years leading up to his death in early 1572. For more than 150 years, it existed only in manuscript form, before finally being edited in 1734–1736. Therefore, there is no clear publication date of the chronicle, and its date of composition can only be approximated, as c. 1570 or before 1572. It is Tschudi's account of the legend, however, which became the major model for later writers, even prior to its 1730s print edition. ¹

A widespread veneration of Tell, including sight-seeing excursions to the scenes of his deeds, can be ascertained by the early 16th century. Heinrich Brennwald in the early 16th century mentions the chapel (Tellskapelle) on the site of Tell's leap from his captors' boat. Tschudi mentions a "holy cottage" (heilig hüslin) built on the site of Gessler's assassination. Peter Hagendorf, a soldier in the Thirty Years' War, mentions a visit to "the chapel where William Tell escaped" in his diary. The first recorded Tell play (Tellspiel), known as the Urner Tellspiel ('Tell Play of Uri'), was probably performed in the winter of either 1512 or 1513 in Altdorf. The church of Bürglen had a bell dedicated to Tell from 1581, and a nearby chapel has a fresco dated to 1582 showing his death in the Schächenbach. ¹

The Three Tells (die Drei Telle(n)) were symbolic figures of the Swiss peasant war of 1653. They expressed the hope of the subject population in repeating the success of the rebellion against Habsburg Austria in the early 14th century. By the 18th century, the Three Tells had become associated with a sleeping hero legend. They were said to be asleep in a cave at the Rigi. The return of Tell in times of need was already foretold in the Tellenlied of 1653 and symbolically fulfilled in the impersonation of the Three Tells by costumed individuals, in one instance culminating in an actual assassination executed by these impersonators in historical costume. Tell during the 16th century had become closely associated and eventually merged with the Rütlischwur legend, and the Three Tells represented the three conspirators Walter Fürst, Arnold von Melchtal and Werner Stauffacher. In 1653, three men dressed in historical costume representing the Three Tells appeared in Schüpfheim. Other impersonations of the Three Tells also appeared in the Freie Ämter and in the Emmental. The first impersonators of the Three Tells were Hans Zemp, Kaspar Unternährer of Schüpfheim and Ueli Dahinden of Hasle. They appeared at a number of important peasant conferences during the war, symbolizing the continuity of the present rebellion with the resistance movement against the Habsburg overlords at the origin of the Swiss Confederacy. Unternährer and Dahinden fled to the Entlebuch alps before the arrival of the troops of General Sebastian Peregrin Zwyer; Zemp escaped to the Alsace region. ¹

Throughout the long nineteenth century, and into the World War II period, Tell was perceived as a symbol of rebellion against tyranny both in Switzerland and in Europe. Antoine-Marin Lemierre wrote a play inspired by Tell in 1766 and revived it i… ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “William Tell”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

William Tell is folk hero of Switzerland, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 54 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²