OoT. 5, 1883.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



211 



" That I might avenge on thee the swerving of the first by 

 the points of the others, lest perchance my innosence 

 might have been punished, while your violence escaped 

 scot-free.' " * 



Going further northward we find tales corresponding in 

 their main features to the above, in the Icelandic Saga, the 

 Vilkina ; in the Norse Saga of Saint Olaf or Thidrik ; and 

 in the story of Harold, son of Sigurd. In the Olaf Saga 

 it is said that the saint or king, desiring the conversion of 

 a brave heathen, named Eindridi, competed with him in 

 various athletic sports, swam with him, wrestled with him, 

 and then shot with him. Olaf then dared Eindridi to 

 strike a writing-tablet from o& his son's head with an 

 arrow, and bade two men bind the eyes of the child and 

 hold the napkin so that the boy might not move when he 

 heard the whizz of the arrow. Olaf aimed first, aaid the 

 arrow grazed the lad's head. Eindridi then prepared to 

 shoot, but the mother of the boy interfered and persuaded 

 the king to abandon this dangerous test of skill. The story 

 adds that had the boy been injured, Eindridi would have 

 revenged himself on the king.f 



Somewhat like this, as from the locality might be 

 expected, is the Faroe Isles variant. King Harold chal- 

 lenges Geyti, son of Aslak, and, vexed at being beaten in 

 a swimming match, bids Geyti shoot a hazel-nut from oft' 

 his brother's head. He consents, and the king witnesses 

 the feat, when Geyti 



" Shot the httle nut away, 

 Xor hurt the lad a hair." 



Next day Harold sends for the archer, and says : — 



" List thee, Geyti, Aslak's son, 

 And truly tell to me, 

 Wherefore hadst thou arrows twain 

 In the wood yestreen with thee ?" 



To which Geyti answers : — 



" Therefore had I arrows twain 

 Yestreen in the wood with me. 

 Had I but hurt my brother dear 

 The other had piei'ced thee." 



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 liim 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 Ultrair," 

 a work of the twelfth century. 



Thus far I have spoken of the variants of the legend 

 found among Aryan peoples, and it is tempting to base 

 upon this dilt'usion of a common incident a theory of its 

 origin among the Central Asian ancestors of the Swiss and 

 the Norseman, the Persian and the Icelander, iiut it is 

 found among non-Aryans also. The ethnologist, Castren, 

 whose researches in Finland liave secured a valuable mass 

 of fast-perishing materials, obtained this tale in the village 

 Ultuwa. " A fight took place between some frceliooters 

 and the inhabitants of the village of Alajarai. The robbers 

 plundered every house, and carried oil' amongst their captives 

 an old man. As they proceeded with their spoils along the 



* Bk. X., p. 160. Cf. Baring Gould's " Curious Myths," p. 117; 

 and Fisko's " Myths and Myth-raakers," p. 4. 

 t Baring Rould, p. 119. 



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 diflusion of the Tell story very fully 

 in tho 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 Mon- 

 golians, 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 master- 

 shot 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 gar- 

 lands of bold deeds of precious memory, around the brow 

 of its darling champion.'* Of course the solar mytho- 

 logists 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. 



Note. — The totemic illustration in the previons paper was copied 

 from Dorman's " Primitive Superstitions," p 238, and Lubbock's 

 " Origin of Civilisation," p. 52. 



THE ELEMENTS. t 



rpHOUG H theoretical and practical chemistry are now 

 X intertwined, with manifest advantage to each, they 

 appear to have been far apart in their origin. Practical 

 chemistry arose from the arts of life, the knowledge em- 

 pirically and laboriously acquired by the miner and metal- 

 lurgist, the potter and the glass-worker, the cook and the 

 perfumer. Theoretical chemistry derived its origin from 

 cosmogony. 



In tlie childliood of the human race the question was 

 eagerly put, " By what process were all things made 1 " 

 And some of the answers given started the doctrine of 

 elements. The earliest documentary evidence of the idea is 

 probably contained in the " Shoo King," the most esteemed 

 of the Chinese classics for its antiquity — probably older 

 than Solomon's writings. The elements named are — water, 

 fire, wood, metal, earth. A similar idea of five elements, 



• Introd. XXXV. 



t From Dr. Gladstone's Address, Chemical Section of British 

 Association. 



