Did William Tell really shoot an apple off his son’s head? | HowStuffWorks Did William Tell really shoot an apple off his son’s head? A sculpture of legendary Swiss hero William Tell and his trusty crossbow looks out over Lausanne, Switzerland, at sunset. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images Generations can recognize the "William Tell Overture" within a few notes of its launch, thanks to its lasting association with vintage Lone Ranger reruns and a 2013 cinematic remake of the same name. But who was William Tell, and did he really shoot an apple off his son's head? Tell was a farmer and Swiss folk hero. He literally stands as a symbol of political freedom; there is a bronze statue of him in Uri, a mountain village that is the birthplace of modern Switzerland . As the country's founding father, Tell is both legend and legendary. As the story goes, in 1307, an agent of the Hapsburg duke of Austria placed a Hapsburg hat on a pole and ordered passersby to remove their caps.

Tell refused and was then ordered to shoot an apple off his son's head with an arrow at 120 paces or he and his son would both be killed. Tell obliged and succeeded in hitting the apple off his son's head in a single shot. Up Next Was Isaac Newton really hit in the head with an apple? What happened next kicked off a revolution among the poor, medieval inhabitants and led to an overthrow of capricious foreign rule. The agent asked Tell why he had a second arrow in his jacket, to which Tell replied, "If the first arrow had killed my son, I would have shot the second at you, and I would not have missed." Tell was promptly detained and deported by boat, bound for a dungeon in a neighboring castle. He escaped, galvanized others in an uprising and the rest is a proud part of Swiss history. Unfortunately, many scholars doubt that Tell was actually a real person. There's no evidence that he ever existed or that anyone in Uri shot an arrow off a child's head. More likely, the tale is amalgamation of events real and imagined.

While the uprising against Austria is steeped in reality, the addition of Tell's daring feat probably comes from a remarkably similar story originating in 18th-century Denmark. In it, a Viking chief boasting of his marksmanship to a king, who promptly ordered the Viking to prove it. The king placed an apple on the Viking man's son and ordered the Viking to shoot it off his head with a single arrow. The Viking did so, and when asked why he had another arrow in his vest, replied, "To kill you, sire, had I killed my son" [source: Wernick ] Even the first written account of Tell's exploits -- appearing 250 years after the supposed events occurred -- had to be revised to match other accounts of Switzerland's budding independence, adding even more weight to the fact that Tell's life may have been a tall tale after all [sources: Wernick , Britannica ].

1 ROBIN HOOD HOME | BIOLOGY | FILMS | GEOGRAPHY | HISTORY | INDEX | MUSIC | SOLAR BOATS | SPORT | SPONSORS William Tell ( German Wilhelm Tell, French Guillaume Tell, Italian Guglielmo Tell) was a legendary hero of disputed historical authenticity who is said to have lived in the Canton of Uri in Switzerland in the early 14th century. The legend William Tell from Bï¿½rglen was known as an expert marksman with the crossbow. At the time, the Habsburg emperors were seeking to dominate Uri. Hermann Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf raised a pole in the village's central square with his hat on top and demanded that all the local townsfolk bow before it. As Tell passed by without bowing, he was arrested. He received the punishment of being forced to shoot an apple off the head of his son, Walter, or else both would be executed. William Tell statue - Denkmal Altdorf Tell had been promised freedom if he shot the apple. On November 18, 1307, Tell split the fruit with a single bolt from his crossbow, without mishap.

When Gessler queried him about the purpose of the second arrow in his quiver, Tell answered that if he had ended up killing his son in that trial, he would have turned the crossbow on the reeve. Gessler became enraged at that comment, and had Tell bound and brought to his ship to be taken to his castle at Kï¿½ssnacht. In a storm on Lake Lucerne, Tell managed to escape. On land, he went to Kï¿½ssnacht, and when Gessler arrived, he shot him with a crossbow bolt. This defiance of the Austrian reeve sparked a rebellion, leading to the formation of the Old Swiss Confederacy . The history of the legend The legend of William Tell appears first in the 15th century, in two different versions.

One version, found, for example, in a popular ballad from around 1470 and then in the chronicles of Melchior Russ from Bern (written 1482 to 1488) portrays Tell as the main actor of the independence struggles of the founding cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy; the other, found in the Weisse Buch von Sarnen of 1470, sees Tell as a minor character in a complot against the Habsburgs led by others. Aegidius Tschudi, a Catholic conservative historian, merged these two earlier accounts into the myth summarized above in 1570. The story of a great hero successfully shooting a small object from his child's head and then killing the tyrant who forced him to do it, however, is an archetype present in several Germanic myths. The motif also appears in other stories from Norse mythology, in particular the story of Egil in the Thidreks saga, as well as in the stories of William of Cloudsley from England , Palnetoke from Denmark , and a story from Holstein.

There is also an entry in the Malleus Maleficarum regarding witch-archers that bears a surprising resemblance to the story of William Tell, telling of a wizard shooting a penny off the cap of his little son, including mention of a prince tempting the marksman to attempt the feat, and the second arrow intended for the prince in the event of failure. Characters from the William Tell legend are featured in decks of playing cards popular in central Europe. The 48-card German deck was developed in the 15th century with various face-card designs, but the William Tell design became extremely popular after the Revolutions of 1848. Historicity debate Franï¿½ois Guillimann, a statesman of Fribourg and later historian and advisor of the Habsburg emperor Rudolph II, wrote to Melchior Goldast in 1607: "I followed popular belief by reporting certain details in my Swiss antiquities [published in 1598], but when I examine them closely the whole story seems to me to be pure fable.".

In 1760, Simeon Uriel Freudenberger from Luzern anonymously published a tract arguing that the legend of Tell in all likelihood was based on the Danish saga of Palnatoke. (A French edition of his book, written by Gottlieb Emmanuel von Haller, was burnt in Altdorf.) This view remained very unpopular, however. Friedrich von Schiller used Tschudi's version as the basis for his play William Tell in 1804, interpreting Tell as a glorified patriot assassin. This interpretation became very popular especially in Switzerland, where the Tell figure was instrumentalized in the early 19th century as a "national hero" and identification figure in the new Helvetic Republic and also later on in the beginnings of the Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, the modern democratic federal state that developed then.

When the historian Joseph Eutych Kopp in the 1830s dared to question the reality of the legend, an effigy of him was burnt on the Rï¿½tli, the meadow above Lake Lucerne whereï¿½according to the legendï¿½the oath was sworn that concluded the original alliance between the founding cantons of the Swiss confederacy. Historians continued to argue over the saga until well into the 20th century. Wilhelm ï¿½chsli published in 1891 a scientific account of the founding of the confederacy (commissioned by the government for the celebration of the first National holiday of Switzerland on August 1, 1891), and clearly dismissed the story as a saga. Yet 50 years later, in 1941, a time where Tell again had become national identification figure, the historian Karl Meyer tried to connect the events of the saga with known places and events. Modern historians generally consider the saga just that, as neither Tell's nor Gessler's existence can be proven.

The legend also tells of the Burgenbruch, a coordinated uprising including the slighting of many forts; however, archeological evidence shows that many of these forts were abandoned and destroyed already long before 1307/08. In spite of all this, William Tell lives on as a "real" hero in popular culture. He is still a powerful identification figure, and according to a recent survey, 60% of the Swiss believe that he really lived. A possible historical nucleus of the legend was suggested by Schï¿½rer (1986). He identified one Wilhelm Gorkeit of Tellikon (modern Dï¿½llikon in the Canton of Zurich). "Gorkeit" is explained as a version of the surname Armbruster (crossbow maker). Historians were not convinced by Schï¿½rer's hypothesis, but it is still referred to by the nationalistic right sometimes, denouncing its rejection by academia as an "internationalist" conspiracy. In modern politics and arts Antoine-Marin Lemierre in 1766 wrote a play inspired by Tell. The success of this work established the association of Tell as a fighter against tyranny with the history of the French revolution.

The French revolutionary fascination with Tell found its reflection back in Switzerland with the establishmen of the Helvetic Republic. Tell became, as it were, the mascot of the short-lived republic, his figure being featured in its official seal. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe learned of the Tell saga during his travels through Switzerland between 1775 and 1795. He got hold of a copy of Tschudi's chronicles, and considered writing a play about Tell. Ultimately, he gave the idea to his friend Friedrich von Schiller, who in 1803-04 wrote the play Wilhelm Tell, which had its debut performance on March 17, 1804, in Weimar. Schiller's Tell is heavily inspired by the political events in the late 18th century, the French revolution in particular. Schiller's play was performed at Interlaken (the Tellspiele) in the summers of 1912 to 1914, 1931 to 1939 and every year since 1947. In 2004 it was first performed in Altorf itself.

Gioacchino Rossini in turn used Schiller's play as the basis for his 1829 opera William Tell; the William Tell Overture is one of his best-known pieces of music, and has become widely reused in popular culture. John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln was inspired by Tell. Lamenting the negative reaction to his deed, Booth wrote in his journal on April 21, 1865, "[W]ith every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for and what made Tell a Hero. And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat." Following a national competition, won by the submission of Richard Kissling (1848-1919), Altdorf in 1895 erected the monument to its hero. Kissling casts Tell as a peasant and man of the mountains, with strong features and muscular limbs. His powerful hand rests lovingly on the shoulder of little Walter. The scene does not depict the apple.

The depiction is in marked contrast with that used by the Helvetic Republic, where Tell is shown like a landsknecht rather than a peasant, with a sword at his belt and a feathered hat, bending down to pick up his son who is still holding the apple. The first film dedicated to Tell appeared shortly later, made by French director Charles Pathï¿½ in 1900. Only a short fragment survives of this work. The new design of the Federal 5 francs coin issued from 1922 features the bust of a generic "mountain shepherd" designed by Paul Burkard, but due to a similarity of the bust with Kissling's statue, in spite of the missing beard, it was immediately widely identified as Tell by the population. Salvador Dalï¿½ painted two pieces of William Tell in 1931, one entitled The Old Age of William Tell and the other William Tell and Gradiva, and in 1933, he painted The Enigma of William Tell.

Adolf Hitler was enthusiastic about Schiller's play, quoting it in his Mein Kampf, and approving of a German/Swiss co-production of the play where Gï¿½ring's mistress appeared as Tell's wife. From 1938, however, following the assassination attempt by young Swiss Maurice Bavaud (who was later promptly dubbed a "New William Tell" by Rolf Hochhuth), Hitler had the play banned for its subversive qualities. At a banquet in 1942, Hitler is reported to have exclaimed "Why did Schiller have to immortalize that Swiss sniper!". Max Frisch in his "William Tell for Schools" deconstructed the legend, portraying the bailiff as a well-meaning administrator suffering from being placed in a barbaric back-corner of the empire, while Tell is a simpleton who stumbles into his adventure by a series of misunderstandings. Trivia and popular culture William S. Burroughs and David Cronenberg both talk of a game similar to Russian Roulette called "William Tell." This was the name of an ill-fated game that resulted in the death of Burroughs' wife Joan Vollmer.

Cronenberg makes reference to this in the movie Naked Lunch - a reference to the life of Burroughs rather than his book of the same name. Cartoonist Gary Larson lampooned the story in a Far Side strip, suggesting that William Tell had an older son with gigantism and that the first attempt to shoot the apple was predictably unsuccessful. The cover of National Lampoon's "Greatest Hits" shows William Tell's son lying dead with an arrow sticking out of him, and the apple hovering in mid-air above him. A television series titled "The Adventures of William Tell" aired in 1958 and 1959. The famous Grateful Dead song "St. Stephen" contains a reference to Tell. Miss Switzerland 2005-06 Lauriane Gillieron will portray a female version of Tell during the Miss Universe 2006 national costume segment of the international beauty pageant on July 23, 2006. ï¿½chsli, W.: Die Anfï¿½nge der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft; Zï¿½rich, 1891.

Schï¿½rer, Arnold Claudio, Und es gab Tell doch, Lucerne (1986), ISBN 3-85725-106-2. William Tell William Tell Guglielmo Tell; Romansh : Guglielm Tell) is a folk hero of disputed historical authenticity who is said to have lived in the canton of Uri in Switzerland in the early 14th century. The legend proper William Tell, who originally hailed from Bürglen, was known as an expert marksman with the crossbow . At the time, the Habsburg emperors of Austria were seeking to dominate Uri. Hermann Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, raised a pole in the village's central square, hung his hat on top of it, and demanded that all the local townsfolk bow before the hat. When Tell passed by the hat without bowing to it, he was arrested. He received the punishment of being forced to shoot an apple off the head of his son, Walter, or else both would be executed. Tell had been promised freedom if he successfully shot the apple.

On 18 November 1307, Tell split the fruit with a single bolt from his crossbow, without mishap. When Gessler queried him about the purpose of a second bolt in his quiver, Tell answered that if he had killed his son, he would have turned the crossbow on Gessler himself. Gessler became enraged at that comment, and had Tell bound and brought to his ship to be taken to his castle at Küssnacht. But when a storm broke on Lake Lucerne, Tell managed to escape. On land, he went to Küssnacht, and when Gessler arrived, Tell shot him with his crossbow. Tell's defiance of Gessler sparked a rebellion, in which Tell himself acted out a leading part, leading to the formation of the Swiss Confederation. Tell fought in the Battle of Morgarten in 1315. He died in 1354 while trying to save a child from drowning in the Schächenbach, an alpine river in Uri. A fresco in a chapel in Bürglen, which dates to 1582, depicts this scene.

History of the legend The first reference to William Tell appears in the White Book of Sarnen (German: Weisses Buch von Sarnen). This volume was written in 1475 by a country scribe named Hans Schriber. It makes mention of the Rütli oath (German: Rütlischwur), the Burgenbruch and Tell’s heroic deeds. Another documentation of Tell’s exploits is the Song of the Founding of the Confederation (German: Lied von der Entstehung der Eidgenossenschaft). This earliest surviving Tell song, or, in German, Tellenlied, was written and composed around 1477 by an anonymous poet. It explores the beginnings of the Swiss Confederation , the expulsion of the foreign governors, as well as the famous episode of Tell shooting at the apple on his son’s head. Further reference to William Tell and his adventures is to be found in Petermann Etterlin’s Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation (German: Kronika von der loblichen Eydtgenossenschaft). Etterlin’s chronicle, which was first printed in 1507, is the earliest printed version of the Tell story.

Another account of William Tell’s deeds is given in the chronicle of Melchior Russ from Lucerne . This book, which the author dates to 1482, constitutes nothing more than an incoherent compilation of older writings such as the Song of the Founding of the Confederation or Conrad Justinger’s Bernese Chronicle, or Chronicle of the State of Bern; in German, Chronik der Stadt Bern. The next reference to William Tell can be found in a Tell play, Tellspiel in German, whose debut performance was probably held in the winter of either 1512 or 1513 in Altdorf. This oldest existing written version of a Tell play is known under the name Urner Tellspiel, which translates from the German as ‘Tell Play of Uri.’ According to the Swiss historian Jean-François Bergier, Aegidius Tschudi from Glarus merged several earlier accounts of the William Tell myth into the story that is summarized above. Tschudi’s monumental work, Chronicon Helveticum, Latin for "Swiss Chronicle," which was written around 1550, became the major model for later writers dealing with William Tell.

Not only did Tschudi’s chronicle become the main source for Johannes von Müller’s History of the Swiss Confederation (German: Geschichte Schweizerischer Eidgenossenschaft), it also served as a model for Friedrich Schiller's play William Tell (German: Wilhelm Tell). Other Tell figures Although the different William Tell stories are not consistent in all details, they are all constructed around the famous episode of Tell and the apple (German: Apfelschussszene). However, as the educated patrician Gottlieb Emmanuel von Haller and the pastor Simeon Uriel Freudenberger pointed out in 1760 in a short leaflet with the title William Tell, a Danish Fable (German: Der Wilhelm Tell, ein dänisches Mährgen), there are many parallels to the Tell story in Nordic literature. In fact, the story of a great hero successfully shooting an apple from his child’s head is an archetype present in the story of Egil in the Thidreks saga as well as in the stories of Adam Bell from England , Palnatoke from Denmark and a story from Holstein .

The oldest documented Tell figure is a Danish warrior named Toko whose story appears for the first time in the Gesta Danorum (Latin: ‘Deeds of the Danes’), a twelfth-century text compiled by Saxo Grammaticus . As with William Tell, Toko is forced by the ruler, (in this case King Harald Bluetooth) to shoot an apple off his son’s head as proof of his marksmanship. A striking similarity between William Tell and Toko is that both heroes take more than one arrow out of their quiver. When asked why he pulled several arrows out of his quiver, Toko, too, replies that if he had struck his son with the first arrow, he would have shot King Harald with the remaining two arrows. Historicity debate François Guillimann, a statesman of Fribourg and later historian and advisor of the Habsburg emperor Rudolph II, wrote to Melchior Goldast in 1607: "I followed popular belief by reporting certain details in my Swiss antiquities [published in 1598], but when I examine them closely the whole story seems to me to be pure fable.".

In 1760, Simeon Uriel Freudenberger from Luzern anonymously published a tract arguing that the legend of Tell in all likelihood was based on the Danish saga of Palnatoke. A French edition of his book, written by Gottlieb Emmanuel von Haller (Guillaume Tell, Fable danoise), was burnt in Altdorf. This view remained very unpopular, however. Friedrich von Schiller used Tschudi's version as the basis for his play Wilhelm Tell in 1804, interpreting Tell as a glorified patriot assassin. This interpretation became very popular especially in Switzerland, where the Tell figure was instrumentalized in the early 19th century as a "national hero" and identification figure in the new Helvetic Republic and also later on in the beginnings of the Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, the modern democratic federal state that developed then.

When the historian Joseph Eutych Kopp dared in the 1830s to question the veracity of the legend his effigy was burnt on the Rütli, the meadow above Lake Lucerne where—according to the legend—the oath was sworn that concluded the original alliance between the founding cantons of the Swiss confederacy. Historians continued to argue over the saga until well into the 20th century. In 1891 Wilhelm Öchsli published a scientific account of the founding of the confederacy (commissioned by the government for the celebration of the first National holiday of Switzerland on August 1 , 1891), and dismissed the story as fiction. Yet 50 years later in 1941, when Tell had again become a national identification figure, the historian Karl Meyer tried to connect the events of the saga with known places and events. Modern historians generally consider the saga to be fiction, as neither Tell's nor Gessler's existence can be proven.

The legend also tells of the Burgenbruch, a coordinated uprising including the slighting of many forts; however, archeological evidence shows that many of these forts were already abandoned and destroyed long before 1307/08. In spite of all this, William Tell lives on as a "real" hero in popular culture. He is still a powerful identification figure, and according to a recent survey, 60% of the Swiss believe that he really lived. A possible historical nucleus of the legend was suggested by Schärer (1986). He identified one Wilhelm Gorkeit of Tellikon (modern Dällikon in the Canton of Zurich). "Gorkeit" is explained as a version of the surname Armbruster (crossbow maker). Historians were not convinced by Schärer's hypothesis, but it is still referred to by the nationalistic right, who denounce its rejection by academia as an "internationalist" conspiracy. In modern politics and arts Antoine-Marin Lemierre wrote a play inspired by Tell in 1766 and revived it in 1786. The success of this work established the association of Tell as a fighter against tyranny with the history of the French revolution .

The French revolutionary fascination with Tell was reflected in Switzerland with the establishment of the Helvetic Republic. Tell became, as it were, the mascot of the short-lived republic, his figure being featured on its official seal. The French Navy also had a Tonnant class ship of the line named Guillaume Tell, which was captured by the British Royal Navy in 1800. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe learned of the Tell saga during his travels through Switzerland between 1775 and 1795. He obtained a copy of Tschudi's chronicles and considered writing a play about Tell, but ultimately, gave the idea to his friend Friedrich von Schiller, who in 1803-04 wrote the play Wilhelm Tell, first performed on March 17 , 1804 in Weimar . Schiller's Tell is heavily inspired by the political events of the late 18th century, the French and American revolutions , in particular. Schiller's play was performed at Interlaken (the Tellspiele) in the summers of 1912 to 1914, 1931 to 1939 and every year since 1947.

In 2004 it was first performed in Altdorf itself. Gioachino Rossini used Schiller's play as the basis for his 1829 opera William Tell. The William Tell Overture is one of his best-known and most frequently imitated pieces of music; in the 20th Century, the "coda" of the Overture became the theme for the radio, television, and motion picture incarnations of The Lone Ranger, a fictional Western hero. John Wilkes Booth , the assassin of Abraham Lincoln , was inspired by Tell. Lamenting the negative reaction to his action, Booth wrote in his journal on April 21, 1865 "with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for and what made Tell a Hero. And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat." The author William S. Burroughs was arrested in Mexico for attempting to shoot a glass off his wife's head with a .45 pistol during a game in which he imitated William Tell.

He missed, shooting her straight through the temple, but was freed after a sum of money arrived at the jail for his release. Following a national competition, won by Richard Kissling, Altdorf erected a monument in 1895 to its hero. Kissling casts Tell as a peasant and man of the mountains, with strong features and muscular limbs. His powerful hand rests lovingly on the shoulder of little Walter, but the apple is not shown. The depiction is in marked contrast with that used by the Helvetic Republic, where Tell is shown as a landsknecht rather than a peasant, with a sword at his belt and a feathered hat, bending down to pick up his son who is still holding the apple. The first film about Tell was made by French director Charles Pathé in 1900; only a short fragment survives. A version of the legend was retold in P.G. Wodehouse's William Tell Told Again (1904), written in prose and verse with characteristic Wodehousian flair.

The design of the Federal 5 francs coin issued from 1922 features the bust of a generic "mountain shepherd" designed by Paul Burkard, but due to a similarity of the bust with Kissling's statue, in spite of the missing beard, it was immediately widely identified as Tell. Salvador Dalí painted The Old Age of William Tell and William Tell and Gradiva in 1931, and The Enigma of William Tell in 1933. Adolf Hitler was enthusiastic about Schiller's play, quoting it in his Mein Kampf, and approving of a German/Swiss co-production of the play in which Hermann Göring's mistress Emmy Sonnemann appeared as Tell's wife. But on June 3 , 1941, Hitler had the play banned. The reason for the ban is not known, but may been related to the failed assassination attempt in 1938 by young Swiss Maurice Bavaud (executed on May 14, 1941, and later dubbed "a new William Tell" by Rolf Hochhuth), or the subversive nature of the play.

Hitler is reported to have exclaimed at a banquet in 1942: "Why did Schiller have to immortalize that Swiss sniper!" Max Frisch in his "William Tell for Schools" deconstructed the legend, portraying the bailiff as a well-meaning administrator suffering from being placed in a barbaric back-corner of the empire, while Tell is a simpleton who stumbles into his adventure by a series of misunderstandings. Spanish playwright Alfonso Sastre re-worked the legend in 1955 in his "Guillermo Tell tiene los ojos tristes" (William Tell has sad eyes); it was not performed until the Franco regime in Spain ended. There are many other pictorial and textual references, ranging from a black humour cartoon by Gary Larson to album covers (e.g. the National Lampoon's "Greatest Hits" album), song lyrics (e.g. in St. Stephen from the Grateful Dead and many others), movies such as the 1928 Charlie Chaplin film The Circus, and even computer games like that in the Beginner's Guide for the Inform programming language . Tell City, Perry County, Indiana , USA, is named after William Tell.

The 1987 TV series Crossbow told of a fictionalised account of William Tell and his son. The Post-Hardcore band Senses Fail make a reference to William Tell in their song "The Priest and The Matador". The alternative rock band Brand New references William Tell in the song "You Won't Know". The English band Squeeze references William Tell in the song "Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)". The video game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater has a villain using two crossbows, one of which he has named "William Tell" (Wikipedia) William Tell – Exequy's Blog Bio , History William Tell was a legendary hero of disputed historical authenticity who is said to have lived in the Canton of Uri in Switzerland in the early fourteenth century. The myth symbolizes the struggle for political and individual freedom. The legend began seven hundred years ago when the Austrians controlled what is now Switzerland. The Austrian ruler, Landburgher Gessler, tyrannically demanded every passerby of the marketplace salute his hat, that hung on a pole. Tell, walking into the marketplace for the first time following the edict, refused to salute and was immediately arrested.

Gessler, who knew of Tell’s skill as a bowman, ordered that Tell’s only hope of avoiding execution was to shoot an arrow into an apple placed on his son’s head from a distance of 20 paces (approximately 60 feet). According to the legend, Tell successfully split the apple on his son’s head and later killed Gessler and thus initiated the movement which secured Switzerland’s independence. However, like most folklore, the story as well as Tell’s own existence is open to dispute. The legend William Tell from Bürglen was known as an expert marksman with the crossbow. At the time, the Habsburg emperors were seeking to dominate Uri. Hermann Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf raised a pole in the village’s central square with his hat on top and demanded that all the local townsfolk bow before it. As Tell passed by without bowing, he was arrested. He received the punishment of being forced to shoot an apple off the head of his son, Walter, or else both would be executed. Tell had been promised freedom if he shot the apple.

On November 18, 1307, Tell split the fruit with a single bolt from his crossbow, without mishap. When Gessler queried him about the purpose of the second bolt in his quiver, Tell answered that if he had ended up killing his son in that trial, he would have turned the crossbow on Gessler himself. Gessler became enraged at that comment, and had Tell bound and brought to his ship to be taken to his castle at Küssnacht. In a storm on Lake Lucerne, Tell managed to escape. On land, he went to Küssnacht, and when Gessler arrived, Tell shot him with the crossbow. This defiance of the Austrian, Gessler, sparked a rebellion, leading to the formation of the Swiss Confederation. The history of the legend The legend of William Tell appears first in the fifteenth century, in two different versions.

One version, found in a popular ballad (Tellenlied) from around 1470, in the chronicles of Melchior Russ from Bern (written 1482 to 1488) and in the first theater adaptation of the story, the Tellenspiel from 1512, portrays Tell as the main actor of the independence struggles of the founding cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy; the other, found in the Weisse Buch von Sarnen of 1470, sees Tell as a minor character in a conspiracy against the Habsburgs led by others. Aegidius Tschudi, a Catholic conservative historian, merged these two earlier accounts in 1570 into the story summarized above. All these early written accounts focus on Tell’s confrontation with Gessler. The different versions are not always consistent. The ballad mentions that Gessler had wanted to have Tell drowned in the lake, and Russ mentions that Tell shot Gessler immediately after having escaped instead of at Küssnacht. Similar variability exists concerning Tell’s later life, of which the classic tale does not tell.

Tschudi’s version of the legend has it that he died in 1354 while trying to save a child from drowning in the Schächenbach, an alpine river in Uri. There is a fresco from 1582 in a chapel in Bürglen showing this scene. The story of a great hero successfully shooting a small object from his child’s head and then killing the tyrant who forced him to do it, however, is an archetype present in several Germanic myths. The motif also appears in other stories from Norse mythology, in particular the story of Egil in the Thidreks saga, as well as in the stories of William of Cloudsley from England, Palnetoke from Denmark, and a story from Holstein. There is also an entry in the Malleus Maleficarum regarding witch-archers that bears a surprising resemblance to the story of William Tell, telling of a wizard shooting a penny off the cap of his young son, including mention of a prince tempting the marksman to attempt the feat, and the second arrow intended for the prince in the event of failure. Characters from the legend are featured in decks of playing cards popular in central Europe.

The 48-card German deck was developed in the fifteenth century with various face-card designs, but the William Tell design became extremely popular after the Revolutions of 1848. Historicity debate François Guillimann, a statesman of Fribourg and later historian and advisor of the Habsburg emperor Rudolph II, wrote to Melchior Goldast in 1607: “I followed popular belief by reporting certain details in my Swiss antiquities [published in 1598], but when I examine them closely the whole story seems to me to be pure fable.” In 1760, Simeon Uriel Freudenberger from Luzern anonymously published a tract arguing that the legend of Tell in all likelihood was based on the Danish saga of Palnatoke. (A French edition of his book, written by Gottlieb Emmanuel von Haller, was burnt in Altdorf.) This view remained very unpopular, however. Friedrich von Schiller used Tschudi’s version as the basis for his play Wilhelm Tell in 1804, interpreting Tell as a glorified patriot assassin.

This interpretation became very popular especially in Switzerland, where the Tell figure was instrumentalized in the early nineteenth century as a “national hero” and identification figure in the new Helvetic Republic and also later on in the beginnings of the Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, the modern democratic federal state that developed then. When the historian Joseph Eutych Kopp in the 1830s dared to question the reality of the legend, an effigy of him was burnt on the Rütli, the meadow above Lake Lucerne where—according to the legend—the oath was sworn that concluded the original alliance between the founding cantons of the Swiss confederacy. Historians continued to argue over the saga until well into the twentieth century. Wilhelm Öchsli published in 1891 a scientific account of the founding of the confederacy (commissioned by the government for the celebration of the first National holiday of Switzerland on August 1, 1891), and clearly dismissed the story as a saga. Yet 50 years later, in 1941, a time where Tell again had become national identification figure, the historian Karl Meyer tried to connect the events of the saga with known places and events.

Modern historians generally consider the saga just that, as neither Tell’s nor Gessler’s existence can be proven. The legend also tells of the Burgenbruch, a coordinated uprising including the slighting of many forts; however, archeological evidence shows that many of these forts were abandoned and destroyed already long before 1307/08. A possible historical nucleus of the legend was suggested by Schärer (1986). He identified one Wilhelm Gorkeit of Tellikon (modern Dällikon in the Canton of Zurich). “Gorkeit” is explained as a version of the surname Armbruster (crossbow maker). Historians were not convinced by Schärer’s hypothesis, but it is still referred to by the nationalistic right sometimes, denouncing its rejection by academia as an “internationalist” conspiracy. Legacy Antoine-Marin Lemierre in 1766 wrote a play inspired by Tell. The success of this work established the association of Tell as a fighter against tyranny with the history of the French revolution. The French revolutionary fascination with Tell found its reflection back in Switzerland with the establishment of the Helvetic Republic.

Tell became, as it were, the mascot of the short-lived republic, his figure being featured in its official seal. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe learned of the Tell saga during his travels through Switzerland between 1775 and 1795. He got hold of a copy of Tschudi’s chronicles, and considered writing a play about Tell. Ultimately, he gave the idea to his friend Friedrich von Schiller, who in 1803-04 wrote the play Wilhelm Tell, which had its debut performance on March 17, 1804, in Weimar. Schiller’s Tell is heavily inspired by the political events in the late eighteenth century, the French revolution in particular. Schiller’s play was performed at Interlaken (the Tellspiele) in the summers of 1912 to 1914, 1931 to 1939 and every year since 1947. In 2004 it was first performed in Altdorf itself.

Gioacchino Rossini in turn used Schiller’s play as the basis for his 1829 opera William Tell; the William Tell Overture is one of his best-known pieces of music, and has become widely reused in popular culture. John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln was inspired by Tell. Lamenting the negative reaction to his deed, Booth wrote in his journal on April 21, 1865, “[W]ith every man’s hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for and what made Tell a Hero. And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat.” Following a national competition, won by the submission of Richard Kissling (1848-1919), Altdorf in 1895 erected the monument to its hero. Kissling casts Tell as a peasant and man of the mountains, with strong features and muscular limbs. His powerful hand rests lovingly on the shoulder of little Walter. The scene does not depict the apple.

The depiction is in marked contrast with that used by the Helvetic Republic, where Tell is shown like a landsknecht rather than a peasant, with a sword at his belt and a feathered hat, bending down to pick up his son who is still holding the apple. The new design of the Federal 5 francs coin issued from 1922 features the bust of a generic “mountain shepherd” designed by Paul Burkard, but due to a similarity of the bust with Kissling’s statue, in spite of the missing beard, it was immediately widely identified as Tell by the population Share this: William Tell biography, net worth, apple, game, song, story William Tell Published : Jun 8 2016 | Modified : Jun 8 2016 William Tell , better called as 'legend' is an ineluctable part of Swiss Revolution. Apart from being a Sniper famous for his crossbow, he laid the first stone towards the revolution against the despotism of Habsburg emperors of Austria in Switzerland. Click on the image to enlarge. According to his biography, William Tell was a confederate of Werner Stauffacher, who was offended Habsburg rule.

An Austrian ruler, Gessler had raised a pole with his hat on the top, as a symbol of his tyranny where every countryman in Uri was forced to bow before the pole as part of reverence. The legend of William Tell sprung up while he and his son walked past the pole without bowing. For the impudence towards the Royal hat, Tell was compelled to shoot an apple off his son's head with his crossbow. Tell with his excellent marksmanship crossed the perilous situation in a single attempt. Gessler, ho was impressed in the shot, asked Tell what the second arrow was for. Tell was reluctant to answer about the second arrow taken from his quiver. After getting promise from Gessler to spare William's life, he replied that the second one was for Gessler's heart if the first bow hurt the boy. For such arrogance Tell was awarded lifetime imprisonment. He was shackled and was brought to Gessler's boat aiming the dungeon in the castle at Küssnacht. But the Lake Lucerne concealed a storm enough to sink the boat. Tell, the mundane with the lake was unshackled to steer the boat safely. He enigmatically jumped to a rock and pushed the boat back to the stormy water.

Tell assassinated Gessler with his second bow in a boulevard between Immensee and Küssnacht. Tell chiselled the formation of the Swiss Confederation. The Habsburg emperors of Austria were knelt down by the courage and thirst to the liberty of William Tell and his followers in Switzerland. William Tell , the popular legend of Switzerland died in 1354, while saving a child from drowning in the Schächenbach river in Uri. William Tell 's picture is inscribed on the back of Swiss coins, and also there is a monument for William Tell in Altdorf (Uri). Centuries ago, Chronicle there was a Chapel after his name near Sisikon, where he have escaped from Gessler's boat. 'White Book of Sarnen' was a Chronicle which praised the saga of William Tell .Tell's Apple-Shot, escape from Gessler and his rebellion towards tyranny made him the Hero of Switzerland. During the period of World War II, William Tell is considered as the prominent insurgent against despotism in both Switzerland and Europe. So his fame is not circumscribed in Switzerland but also in Europe.

Another William Tell is a musician of recent times who is engaged to Lauren Conrad having net worth of 25 milion USD. The legend of William Tell had become the foundation of an unfinished film namely 'The Story of William Tell '. It was directed by Jack Cardiff, and the film is under cinemascope. If finished, it would be a beautiful pictorial representation of such a brave epic. William Tell Overture is a song opera dedicated to this legend and also, his story has been incorporated into an online game. Help us edit this article and get a chance to win a $50 amazon Gift card. William Tell facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about William Tell The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright The Columbia University Press William Tell, legendary Swiss patriot. According to legend, Tell was a native of Uri, one of the Swiss forest cantons. Gessler, the canton's Austrian bailiff, decreed that Swiss citizens must remove their hats before his hat, which he had posted on a stake in the canton's largest town. Tell refused and as punishment was ordered to shoot an apple off his small son's head.

Although he succeeded, he was held prisoner by Gessler when he revealed that had he failed, he planned to kill Gessler with an arrow he had hidden on his person. Tell escaped and eventually shot Gessler from ambush at Küssnacht, thus setting off the revolt that ousted the bailiff on Jan. 1, 1308. While there is no valid proof of Tell's existence, the legend represents a distorted account of events that resulted (1291) in the formation of the Everlasting League between the cantons of Schwyz , Uri , and Unterwalden . Schiller's popular drama Wilhelm Tell is based on the legend; Rossini's opera William Tell is based on Schiller's drama. Cite this article Myths and Legends of the World COPYRIGHT 2001 Macmillan Reference, USA Tell, William William Tell, a hero of Swiss folklore, became a symbol of Switzerland 's national pride and independence. He is best known for shooting an arrow through an apple sitting on his son's head. Tell's feat of archery supposedly took place around 1300, when Switzerland was under Austrian rule.

The independent-minded Tell refused to salute an Austrian official, who then ordered Tell to take the nerve-wracking shot. Afterward, the official spotted a second arrow. Tell said that if his first arrow had missed, he would have used the second one to kill the official. As punishment, Tell was sent to prison, but he escaped and killed the Austrian official. This act inspired the rebellion that eventually ended Austrian rule in Switzerland. Some accounts name Tell a leader in that fight. * See Nantes and Places at the end of this volume for further information. William Tell first appeared in legends and songs of the 1400s. By the 1700s, various Swiss histories featured the story. The play Wilhelm Tell (1804) by the German poet Friedrich von Schiller brought the Swiss hero to world attention, as did the opera Guillaume Tell (1829) by Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini. Despite these works, however, there is no historical evidence that William Tell existed, although the stories about him may have been based on a kernel of reality. The famous test of marksmanship, with a cherished life at stake, is similar to stories from Norse* and British folklore.

Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA William Tell : Famous : Biography : Information Site Map William Tell William Tell (German: Wilhelm Tell; French: Guillaume Tell; Italian: Guglielmo Tell) is a legendary hero of disputed historical authenticity who is said to have lived in the Canton of Uri in Switzerland in the early 14th century. Print of Gessler and Wilhelm Tell More Books from Amazon.co.uk William Tell from Bï¿½rglen was known as an expert marksman with the crossbow. At the time, the Habsburg emperors were seeking to dominate Uri. Hermann Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf raised a pole in the village's central square with his hat on top and demanded that all the local townsfolk bow before it. As Tell passed by without bowing, he was arrested. He received the punishment of being forced to shoot an apple off the head of his son, Walter, or else both would be executed. Tell had been promised freedom if he shot the apple. On November 18, 1307, Tell split the fruit with a single bolt from his crossbow, without mishap.

When Gessler queried him about the purpose of the second bolt in his quiver, Tell answered that if he had ended up killing his son in that trial, he would have turned the crossbow on Gessler himself. Gessler became enraged at that comment, and had Tell bound and brought to his ship to be taken to his castle at Kï¿½ssnacht. In a storm on Lake Lucerne, Tell managed to escape. On land, he went to Kï¿½ssnacht, and when Gessler arrived, Tell shot him with the crossbow. Tell's defiance of Gessler sparked a rebellion leading to the formation of the Swiss Confederation. Tell fought in the Battle of Morgarten in 1315. He died in 1354 while trying to save a child from drowning in the Schï¿½chenbach, an alpine river in Uri. There is a fresco from 1582 in a chapel in Bï¿½rglen showing this scene. The history of the legend The first reference to William Tell appears in the White Book of Sarnen (German: Weisses Buch von Sarnen).

This volume was written in 1474 by a country scribe called Hans Schriber. It makes mention of the Rï¿½tli oath (German: Rï¿½tlischwur), the Burgenbruch and Tellï¿½s heroic deeds. Another documentation of Tellï¿½s exploits is the Song of the Founding of the Confederation (German: Lied von der Entstehung der Eidgenossenschaft). This earliest surviving Tell song (German: Tellenlied) was composed around 1477 by an anonymous poet. It explores the beginnings of the Swiss Confederation, the expulsion of the foreign governors as well as the famous episode of Tell shooting at the apple on his sonï¿½s head. Further reference to William Tell and his adventures is to be found in Petermann Etterlinï¿½s Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation (German: Kronika von der loblichen Eydtgenossenschaft). Etterlinï¿½s chronicle, which was first printed in 1507, is the earliest printed version of the Tell story.

Another account of William Tellï¿½s deeds is given in the chronicle of Melchior Russ from Lucerne. This book, which the author dates to 1482, constitutes nothing more than an incoherent compilation of older writings such as the Song of the Founding of the Confederation or Conrad Justingerï¿½s Bernese Chronicle (German: Chronik der Stadt Bern). Share | The next reference to William Tell can be found in a Tell play (German: Tellspiel), whose debut performance was probably held in winter 1512/13 in Altdorf. This oldest existing written version of a Tell play is known under the name Urner Tellspiel (German: ï¿½Tell Play of Uriï¿½). According to the Swiss historian Jean-Franï¿½ois Bergier, Aegidius Tschudi from Glarus merged several earlier accounts of the William Tell myth into the story that is summarized above. Tschudiï¿½s monumental work Chronicon Helveticum (Latin: ï¿½Swiss Chronicleï¿½), which was written around 1550, became the major model for later writers dealing with William Tell.

Not only did Tschudiï¿½s chronicle become the main source for Johannes von Mï¿½llerï¿½s History of the Swiss Confederation (German: Geschichte Schweizerischer Eidgenossenschaft), it also served as a model for Friedrich Schiller's play William Tell (German: Wilhelm Tell). Other Tell figures Although the different William Tell stories are not consistent in all details, they are all constructed around the famous episode of Tell and the apple (German: Apfelschussszene). However, as the educated patrician Gottlieb Emmanuel von Haller and the pastor Simeon Uriel Freudenberger pointed out in 1760 in a short leaflet with the title William Tell, a Danish Fable (German: Der Wilhelm Tell, ein dï¿½nisches Mï¿½hrgen), there are many parallels to the Tell story in Nordic literature. In fact, the story of a great hero successfully shooting an apple from his childï¿½s head is an archetype present in the story of Egil in the Thidreks saga as well as in the stories of Adam Bell from England, Palnetoke from Denmark and a story from Holstein.

The oldest documented Tell figure is a Danish warrior named Toko whose story appears for the first time in the Gesta Danorum (Latin: ï¿½Deeds of the Danesï¿½), a twelfth-century text compiled by Saxo Grammaticus. As with William Tell, Toko is forced by King Harald Bluetooth to shoot an apple off his sonï¿½s head as proof of his marksmanship. A striking similarity between William Tell and Toko is that both heroes take more than one arrow out of their quiver. When asked why he pulled several arrows out of his quiver, Toko, too, replies that if he had struck his son with the first arrow, he would have shot King Harald with the remaining two arrows. Historicity debate Franï¿½ois Guillimann, a statesman of Fribourg and later historian and advisor of the Habsburg emperor Rudolph II, wrote to Melchior Goldast in 1607: "I followed popular belief by reporting certain details in my Swiss antiquities ,published in 1598, but when I examine them closely the whole story seems to me to be pure fable.".

In 1760, Simeon Uriel Freudenberger from Luzern anonymously published a tract arguing that the legend of Tell in all likelihood was based on the Danish saga of Palnatoke. A French edition of his book, written by Gottlieb Emmanuel von Haller (Guillaume Tell, Fable danoise), was burnt in Altdorf. This view remained very unpopular, however. Friedrich von Schiller used Tschudi's version as the basis for his play Wilhelm Tell in 1804, interpreting Tell as a glorified patriot assassin. This interpretation became very popular especially in Switzerland, where the Tell figure was instrumentalised in the early 19th century as a "national hero" and identification figure in the new Helvetic Republic and also later on in the beginnings of the Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, the modern democratic federal state that developed then.

When the historian Joseph Eutych Kopp dared in the 1830s to question the veracity of the legend his effigy was burnt on the Rï¿½tli, the meadow above Lake Lucerne whereï¿½according to the legendï¿½the oath was sworn that concluded the original alliance between the founding cantons of the Swiss confederacy. Historians continued to argue over the saga until well into the 20th century. In 1891 Wilhelm ï¿½chsli published a scientific account of the founding of the confederacy (commissioned by the government for the celebration of the first National holiday of Switzerland on August 1, 1891), and dismissed the story as fiction. Yet 50 years later in 1941, when Tell had again become a national identification figure, the historian Karl Meyer tried to connect the events of the saga with known places and events. Modern historians generally consider the saga to be fiction, as neither Tell's nor Gessler's existence can be proven.

The legend also tells of the Burgenbruch, a coordinated uprising including the slighting of many forts; however, archeological evidence shows that many of these forts were already abandoned and destroyed long before 1307/08. In spite of all this, William Tell lives on as a "real" hero in popular culture. He is still a powerful identification figure, and according to a recent survey, 60% of the Swiss believe that he really lived. A possible historical nucleus of the legend was suggested by Schï¿½rer (1986). He identified one Wilhelm Gorkeit of Tellikon (modern Dï¿½llikon in the Canton of Zurich). "Gorkeit" is explained as a version of the surname Armbruster (crossbow maker). Historians were not convinced by Schï¿½rer's hypothesis, but it is still referred to by the nationalistic right, who denounce its rejection by academia as an "internationalist" conspiracy. In modern politics and arts Antoine-Marin Lemierre wrote a play inspired by Tell in 1766 and revived it in 1786.

The success of this work established the association of Tell as a fighter against tyranny with the history of the French revolution. The French revolutionary fascination with Tell was reflected in Switzerland with the establishment of the Helvetic Republic. Tell became, as it were, the mascot of the short-lived republic, his figure being featured on its official seal. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe learned of the Tell saga during his travels through Switzerland between 1775 and 1795. He obtained a copy of Tschudi's chronicles and considered writing a play about Tell, but ultimately, gave the idea to his friend Friedrich von Schiller, who in 1803-04 wrote the play Wilhelm Tell, first performed on March 17, 1804 in Weimar. Schiller's Tell is heavily inspired by the political events of the late 18th century, the French revolution in particular. Schiller's play was performed at Interlaken (the Tellspiele) in the summers of 1912 to 1914, 1931 to 1939 and every year since 1947.

In 2004 it was first performed in Altdorf itself. Gioacchino Rossini used Schiller's play as the basis for his 1829 opera William Tell; the William Tell Overture is one of his best-known and imitated pieces of music. John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, was inspired by Tell. Lamenting the negative reaction to his deed, Booth wrote in his journal on April 21, 1865 "with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honoured for and what made Tell a Hero. And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat." Following a national competition, won by Richard Kissling, Altdorf erected a monument in 1895 to its hero. Kissling casts Tell as a peasant and man of the mountains, with strong features and muscular limbs. His powerful hand rests lovingly on the shoulder of little Walter, but the apple is not shown.

The depiction is in marked contrast with that used by the Helvetic Republic, where Tell is shown as a landsknecht rather than a peasant, with a sword at his belt and a feathered hat, bending down to pick up his son who is still holding the apple. The first film about Tell was made by French director Charles Pathï¿½ in 1900; only a short fragment survives. The design of the Federal 5 francs coin issued from 1922 features the bust of a generic "mountain shepherd" designed by Paul Burkard, but due to a similarity of the bust with Kissling's statue, in spite of the missing beard, it was immediately widely identified as Tell. Salvador Dalï¿½ painted The Old Age of William Tell and William Tell and Gradiva in 1931, and The Enigma of William Tell in 1933. Adolf Hitler was enthusiastic about Schiller's play, quoting it in his Mein Kampf, and approving of a German/Swiss co-production of the play where Gï¿½ring's mistress appeared as Tell's wife; but on June 3, 1941 Hitler had the play banned.

The reason for the ban is not known, but may been related to the failed assassination attempt in 1938 by young Swiss Maurice Bavaud (executed on May 14, 1941, and later dubbed "a new William Tell" by Rolf Hochhuth), or the subversive nature of the play. Hitler is reported to have exclaimed at a banquet in 1942 "Why did Schiller have to immortalize that Swiss sniper!". Max Frisch in his "William Tell for Schools" deconstructed the legend, portraying the bailiff as a well-meaning administrator suffering from being placed in a barbaric back-corner of the empire, while Tell is a simpleton who stumbles into his adventure by a series of misunderstandings. Spanish playwright Alfonso Sastre re-worked the legend in 1955 in his "Guillermo Tell tiene los ojos tristes" (William Tell has sad eyes); it was not performed until the Franco regime in Spain ended. There are many other pictorial and textual references, ranging from a black humour cartoon by Gary Larson to album covers (e.g. the National Lampoon's "Greatest Hits" album), song lyrics (e.g.

in St. Stephen from the Grateful Dead and many others), movies such as the 1928 Charlie Chaplin film The Circus, and even computer games like that in the Beginner's Guide for the Inform programming language. The TV series "Crossbow", with Will Lyman as William Tell, broadcast 71 episodes on the Family channel from 1987 to 1990. Tell City, Perry County, Indiana, USA, is named after William Tell. In the Senses Fail song, The Priest and the Matador, William Tell's name is referenced in the line, "I'm the arrow shot straight to hell, from the bow of William Tell."

Question: A hero to the Swiss, William Tell shot what from the head of his son in a feat of crossbow marksmanship?
Answer: An apple