Part 4
Here, briefly, is the story. Around the year 1240 the Austrian Empire was the dominant power in these parts. The Canton of Unterwalden was governed by the Empire; whereas the Cantons of Uri and of Schwyz governed themselves, but were under the protection of, and owed service to the Empire. Little by little the Hapsburg dynasty endeavoured to absorb the whole country surrounding the Lake. Governors were set up in the three Cantons, tyranny developed, and to meet this process of absorption, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, in 1307, entered into a solemn alliance (the original document, drawn up afterwards, still exists in the archives of Schwyz). This, then, broadly stated, was the setting of the stage upon which William Tell and his companions played their famous parts. These actors emerge, so to speak, from the wings to the dull mutterings of popular exasperation. The Governors are treating the people as the merest serfs. Wolfenschiessen, Governor of Unterwalden, has been killed by the outraged Baumgartner of Altzellen; a dungeon-castle is being built at Altdorf, in Uri, to overawe the people; Arnold of Melchthal’s old father has had his eyes put out and his estate confiscated because his son has chastised one of the Governor’s impudent servants; and Governor Gessler has vowed vengeance upon Werner Stauffacher of Steinen in Schwyz, because the latter is a landed proprietor, and has built himself too fine a house. Walter Fürst (Tell’s father-in-law) of Canton Uri, Werner Stauffacher of Canton Schwyz, and Arnold von Melchtal of Canton Unterwalden, each bringing with them ten men, meet at night on the Rütli--a steep, grass-covered clearing made in the beech woods almost opposite Brunnen--and pledge themselves, in the name of their respective Cantons, to resist all attempts at annexation by Austria. Governor Gessler, hearing rumours of this revolt, sets his hat upon a pole at Altdorf and orders all and sundry to bow down to it.
“The Hat’s a perfect scarecrow to the People.”
William Tell, among others, refuses to bow the knee, and is condemned by Gessler to shoot an apple from off his (Tell’s) son’s head:--
“Thou shalt shoot or perish-- Ay, instantly--and thy Son perish with thee”.
Tell comes successfully through the ordeal, but has a second arrow hidden in his tunic. The Governor sees it and forces Tell to confess--
“If with the first I’d chanc’d to slay my Child-- This second shaft would I have shot at thee”.
Gessler thereupon has Tell seized and bound, and declares:--
“Some Dungeon’s depth must be thy habitation.
* * * * *
--Convey him to the Bark! I’ll follow quickly. I will myself conduct him o’er to Küssnacht.”
A violent storm springs up; the bark is likely to be wrecked. Gessler, in fear and trembling for his own safety, and knowing Tell to be an adept steersman, has him released and orders him to take the helm. Tell directs the bark to the Axenberg, springs upon a little shelf of rock and,
“sending back The stagger’d Boat into the whirl of waters,”
escapes up the wooded cliff. Making for Küssnacht, Tell awaits the Governor in the Hollow Way and shoots him through the heart.
“Whilst Austria’s Tyrant sinks forlorn, The Parent’s curse, the Infant’s scorn, The Hate of Human-kind; Blest with the meed, which Virtue gives, Lo! Tell’s pure name to ages lives, In every nobler heart enshrin’d.”
Of course, critics have arisen, who attempt the destruction of this story. Some would not account themselves progressive if they did not try to annihilate the
past, or turn it upside down, or inside out. Bacon was Shakespeare; Homer was a crowd of at least twenty scribes; a Welshman, and not Columbus, discovered America; and Bonivard, the Prisoner of Chillon, was an out-and-out scamp. So would some deal with Tell. They would treat him as the lake on Mount Pilatus was treated--they would throw stones at him, scoff at his simple, heroic virtue, and drain him even of his existence. Listen to what Baedeker, in his guide to Switzerland, has to say of “the romantic but unfounded tradition of William Tell”:
“The legend of the national hero of Switzerland, as well as the story of the expulsion of the Austrian bailiffs in 1308, is destitute of historical foundation. No trace of such a person is to be found in the work of John of Winterthur (Vitoduranus, 1349), or that of Conrad Justinger of Bern (1420), the earliest Swiss historians. Mention is made of him for the first time in the Sarner Chronik of 1470, and the myth was subsequently embellished by Ægidius Tschudi of Glarus (d. 1542), and still more by Johann von Müller (d. 1809), while Schiller’s famous play has finally secured to the hero a world-wide celebrity. Similar traditions are met with among various northern nations, such as the Danes and Icelanders.”
Does not such reading as this appear to damage the scenery of Uri’s Bay? It seems at least but poor service to render to the tourist--this killing of half of the district’s wild romance. Those who cling to the stout, red little volume as to a dear and trusted friend, must nevertheless feel something like a pang of regret as they climb up through the beech wood to the green slope and the old chalet of the Rütli and drink water from the three famous springs; nor can they be unconscious of a certain feeling of loss as they walk by the bushes of mountain honeysuckle along the path to the little chapel on the Tellsplatte and gaze through the ironwork screen at the fine mural pictures of this outrageous but glorious myth. Tradition is a hard thing to kick against.
Sentiment, however, is of no use for confounding the critics. But let the Baedeker-beridden tourist take heart; there is evidence, after all, not only that Tell may have lived, but that he may have done something to earn his reputation. William Peter, in the Appendix to his English translation of Schiller’s play, voices this evidence. Among other points in favour of the substantial veracity of tradition, he gives two facts of special hopefulness:--
“The many old German Songs and Romances in which he (Tell) is celebrated, and which are so remarkable for their ancient dialect and simplicity as to leave little doubt either of their own authenticity or of the truth of the deeds which they commemorate”;
and
“The creation of three Chapels (one of them--viz. at the Tell’s plat--in 1388, only 24 years after Tell’s death, and when there were 114 persons present in the Landsgemeinde of Uri who had personally known him)”.
He further states that
“The last of Tell’s posterity--a female named Verena--died in 1720. The male branch had become extinct in 1684, by the Death of John Martin Tell of Attinghausen. Tell (the famous Tell) resided at, and was Mayor of Bürglen, which is not half an hour’s walk from the village of Attinghausen. He lived for many years after the events celebrated in Schiller’s Play, performed his part at the battles of Morgarten and Laupen in 1315 and 1339, and perished, in 1354, in his generous attempt to rescue a child from the overflowing waters of the Schächen (the mountain torrent which flows through Bürglen and into the Reuss at Attinghausen).”
Moreover, there is the proved importance of tradition, as such. Something can and must be said for it. That certain episodes, accepted as fact, do not appear in written contemporary history, is not in itself safe proof of the falsity of those episodes. Just because no mention is made of Tell in the White Book of Sarnen, this is small reason for denouncing the hero as a mere replica of Toko, principal actor in an old Danish legend. The truthfulness of traditions handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth has frequently startled those who have set out to refute them. The tradition of the Flood, current among many widely separated and obscure peoples, has been proved by geology to be quite worthy of credence. A rolling stone may gather much moss; but the essential thing, the stone, is beneath the richly-tinted covering.
So, let critic and historian do their worst to damage William Tell; he will escape them as surely as he escaped Gessler. His name and deeds, be they fact or be they fiction, are so much part and parcel of the scenery, that nothing save a devastating convulsion of Nature can possibly bring them to naught. Landmarks must be obliterated, the whole landscape must be radically changed, if Tell is to sink into oblivion. As things are, go where you will around the Lake, he and his age are bound to assert themselves. Even the elements will combine to bring him to your mind. Walk from Brunnen along the magnificent Axenstrasse hewn by the Government from the rock-cliffs of the Axenberg as a strategic route; stroll on amid the red-barked pines, the rocks aglow with tufts of rosy _Erinus alpinus_, or with the rosy springtime heather, or the blood-red summer cranesbill, while Orange Tip, or White Admiral and Purple Emperor butterflies flit from flower to flower or from sun-patch to sun-patch along the road; stroll on to the wayside clearing where stands a stone memorial to the artist, Henry Telbin, who fell from this spot whilst sketching in 1860; sit here amongst the bright wild sunflowers[2] and gaze down the sheer rocks to the sparkling blue-green waters partly flooded in golden light, and take note of how calm and peaceful all is as the gay-awninged row-boats and the curiously ungainly steam cargo-barges steal about the surface. Now mark that
faint, distant rumbling, and look up towards the snows of the Uri-Rothstock. A storm is brewing beyond Göeschenen and among the Bernese Alps. You say that it is nothing; that it is a very long way off? Wait awhile! Mark that filmy wisp of cloud, sprung suddenly from nowhere, wreathing itself slowly about the Teufelsmünster’s cliff; mark, too, how the blue sky has changed to grey behind the snows, and how the snows themselves have turned a sullen white. “Cat’s-paws” are playing erratically upon the water; the mountains are growing harder in colour; heavy vapours are filling the gorges, and the pines about you are whispering mysteriously among themselves. Do you notice how all the row-boats are hastening towards Brunnen, and how the gulls are screaming? Black clouds are rolling up over the Seelisberg hotels; white horses are visible upon the Lake, and the Uri-Rothstock now looks quite forbidding. Do you hear that dull roaring? No, it is not thunder; it is the wind as it approaches. The pines above you are warning you. The snows have disappeared in darkness; Isleton is blotted out, and the Rütli can scarcely be seen for drifting cloud-bursts. The scene is now a chaos of cold indigo steeped in greyness. The wind is rushing on you with a whistling howl, and hurling hail at you. Forked lightning, piercing the murk, stabs at the seething waters, and the thunder rattles and booms and rolls interminably. Where all but a brief while ago was crystal-bright and tranquil, at present is dull-grey pandemonium.
And as the electric tongues flash zigzag across the gloom, you fancy that you catch sight of a storm-tossed barque of ancient form, and that you hear above the screeching wind the scream of fear-struck Gessler, imploring Tell to take the helm. For it was some such storm as this to which Tell owed his freedom and his life. Critics point to the convenient suddenness of the two storms which find a place in Schiller’s play; they call them specimens of poetic licence. But this is not necessarily the case. From the very configuration of the Bay of Uri it is a deadly storm-trap. Ah, it can smile and look winsome enough when it pleases--and this, to our great good, is more than often; but it is subject to surprisingly sudden fits of rage, when it is as fearsome as, and perhaps more treacherous than, many a hurricane-ridden ocean.
The storm has passed as quickly as it came, and butterflies and flowers are in their element once more. If possible, the Bay is the lovelier for its rude half-hour of stress. It can be grand in tempest and foul weather; but that which fits it best is the rule and realm of sunshine. Thus, in hard-won peace and grimly conceived beauty, may we appropriately take leave of the Lake of the Forest Cantons.
There is a movement afoot to erect in these parts a costly and elaborate national monument in commemoration of the founding of the republic; a monument that shall eclipse all existing monuments having a like purpose. Has, then, the Bay of Uri been forgotten, or are there hopes that this new monument will represent a nation’s pride and faith with greater distinction, beauty, and inspiration than does Nature’s own most noble, venerated effort? Saturated as are these precincts with the very spirit of primitive Swiss history; crowded as they are already with mementoes of that heroic past, can any new, particular memorial, however expensive and imposing, add one whit to national consciousness, one whit of strength and fervour to the inherited love of independence? If, as some think, there is a threatening tendency towards future absorption by a neighbouring power, will any fresh monument to liberty, no matter how imposing and elaborate, stir depths of protective patriotism which are not already touched by the scenery of Uri’s Bay and the grand old story of William Tell? I think not. The story is one of Switzerland’s strongest bulwarks; it is among those things which, though they may have never happened, are indestructible. I venture to believe that the spirit of the landscape, and of all for which the landscape stands, is engrained in the race, and that, as long as Uri’s Bay and its historic landmarks exist, Schiller’s lines will express the simple, forceful, and abiding verity--
“True as yon Alp to its own native Flowers, True as the Torrent to its Rocky-Bed, Or Clouds and Winds to their appointed Track The Switzer cleaves to his accustom’d Freedom”.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN _At the Villafield Press, Glasgow, Scotland_
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Canon Rawnsley’s little _brochure_, _The Revival of the Decorative Arts in Lucerne_, is a useful companion to have with one when strolling about the town and looking at the frescoed houses.
[2] _Buphthalmum salicifolium_, an herbaceous plant abundant around this Lake.