Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

OTHER. VERSIONS OF THE MYTH OF TELL. JWJ
youngest son is, receives for answer that lie is dead and CHAP.
buried in the churchyard of Kolrin. The king insists on , ,1—
seeing the body, and the father replies that where so many
lie dead it would not be easy to find the corpse of his son.
But as Harold rides back over the heath, he meets a huntsman
armed with a bow, and asking who he is, learns that it
is the dead Geyti, who has returned to the land of the living,
like Memnon, or Euridyke, or Adonis. The story otherwise
differs little, if at all, from that of Heming. Mr. Gould,
who like Dr. Dasent has thoroughly examined this subject,
cites from Castren a Finnish story, in which, as in the Tell
myth, the apple is shot off a man's head ; but the archer (and
this feature seems specially noteworthy) is a boy of twelve
years old, who appears armed with bow and arrows among
the reeds on the banks of a lake, and threatens to shoot some
robbers who had carried off his father as a captive from
the village of Alajarvi. The marauders agree to yield up
the old man if the boy will do by him as Tell and Cloudeslee
do by their sons. The legend at the least suggests a com-
parison with the myth of the youthful Chrysaor, who also is
seen on the shore of the Delian sea ; while the twelve years
look much like the ten years of the Trojan contest, the hours
of the night during which the sun lies hid from the sight of
men until he conies forth ready for the work in which his
triumph is assured. The myth might be traced yet further,
if it were necessary to do so. In Dr. Dasent's words, * it is
common to the Turks and Mongolians ; and a legend of the
wild Samoyeds, 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 primaeval 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
garlands of bold deeds of precious memory, round the brow
of its darling champion. 5
1
Further still, it seems impossible
not to discern the same myth in the legend which tells us of
the Lykian Sarpedon, that when Isandros and Hippolochos
1 Norse Tales, introd. xxxv.