BOOKPuncher, a magician on the Upper Rhine.^ Another version is seen in the Saga of Saint Olaf, who challenges Eindridi, a heathen whom
he wishes to convert, to the same task, only leading the way himself.
Olaf s arrow grazes the child's head, and the pleading of Eindridi's
wife then induces the king to put an end to the contest. With some
differences of detail the legend reappears in the story of another
Harold (Sigurdarson), in the eleventh century. Here the rival or
opponent of the king is Heming, whose arrows, as Harold remarks,
are all inlaid with gold, like the arrows of Phoibos. Enraged at
many defeats, the king at last dares Heming to shoot a nut on the
head not of his son but of his brother. Not less significant in some
of its touches is the Faroese tradition, which attributes Tell's achieve-
ment to Geyti, Aslak's son, the king being the same who is confronted
by Heming. Learning that Geyti is his match in strength, Harold
rides to the house of Aslak, and asking where his youngest son is,
receives for answer that he is dead and buried in the churchyard of
Kolrin. The king insists on 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. In a Finnish story, 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 comparison 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 comes
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. 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 disputed with each other for the throne, his mother
Laodameia offered him for the venture, when it was settled that the
' The passages from these three Dasent, A'<?;-Jtr Ta/e-j-.introduction.xxxv.- works are quoted at length by Sir G. xxxix.
