THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE APPLE AND PEAR. 
16 
where the angel is speaking to Zacharias, respecting the birth of his son John the Baptist, rendered 
thus in the authorised version :— 
“ For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink.” 
Is thus given :— 
“ For he schal be gret bifore the Lord, and he schal not drinke wyn ne sider.” 
“ The date when this Wycliffe Bible was written is believed to be about 1420. (Havergal 
—Fasti Herefordiensis), and thus it may very possibly have been written by Wycliffe’s companions 
and followers who are known to have lived for several years in seclusion in the wilds of Deerfold 
Forest, North Herefordshire, to escape the persecution which set in against them on the death of 
John of Gaunt in 1399. It must, however, be admitted that the word “ sider” may be a translation 
of “ cri^epa,” the equivalent for “ strong drink,” though not adopted in any of the later translations. 
The apple plays an important part in the story of William Tell, the renowned champion of 
Swiss liberty. The story goes that (in 1307) when Tell refused to uncover his head before the hat of 
the Austrian governor Gessler, set up on a pole for the purpose, he was condemned, in derision of 
his reputed skill as an archer, to shoot an apple from the head of his own son. Tell does so 
successfully but openly states, that a second arrow which he had concealed on his person, was 
destined for the heart of the tyrant if he had injured his son. Eventually, the story says, Tell 
does shoot Gessler and thus begins the insurrection, which at length succeeds in emancipating his 
country. What matters it, that this same apple story had been told before, or that this particular 
version is a myth. It is related by Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian as occurring in 950, 
to a certain Palnatoki, a celebrated archer in the bodyguard of the ruthless King Harold Bluetooth. 
In Norway, it is told of Pansa, the splayfooted, and Hemingr, the Norse archer, a vassal of Harold 
Hardrada, who invaded England in 1066. In Iceland, there is a kindred legend of Egil, brother 
of Wayland Smith, the Norse vulcan. In England, there is the ballad of William of Cloudeslee, 
which supplied Sir Walter Scott with many details of the archery scene in Ivanhoe. 
“ I have a sonne seven years old ; 
Hee is to me full deere 
I will tye him to a stake— 
All shall see him that be here. 
“ And lay an apple on his head 
And goe six score paces him froe, 
And I myself with a broad arrowe 
Shall cleave the apple in towe.” 
(Bell's Early English Ballads). 
It is told of Puncher, a famous magician on the Upper Rhine. It is common to the Turks 
and Mongolians. It is a legend of the wild Samoyeds : and finally it is told in the Persian poem 
of Farrid-Uttin Attar, born in 1119. The facts are the same in all the stories. It is always an 
unerring archer, who at the capricious command of a tyrant, shoots from the head of some one dear 
to him an apple, a nut, or a coin ; and he always has a second arrow, and when questioned as to the 
use for this, the invariable reply is, “To kill thee tyrant, had I slain my son.” 
