obedience. When he was asked what should be the name of the fortress, he answered," Its name will be Zwing Uri," (Force Uri.) This vexed the country people very much. As Gessler remarked this he was angry with them, and on Saint James's day, at Altorf, he ordered a pole to be erected at Alten, on the public place, near the lime-trees, where many people must pass, and placed a hat upon it, and proclaimed repeatedly that every one who passed by should, on pain of losing his estate and suffering corporal punishment, by bowing his head and taking off his barett, do the same honour and reverence as if the king himself were there in person; and placed a man there as a watchman and guard, to take notice and inform against those who did not follow his command. He imagined that he should gain high renown if he brought this brave, manly people, which till now had not allowed itself to be subjected by any one, to the lowest oppression.

In these same days it happened that the landvogt Gessler would go through the country of Schwytz, of which he was also landvogt. Now there was at Steinen, in Schwytz, a wise, honourable man, of old and noble race, named Werner von Stauffacher. The same had built a new and beautiful house on this side of the bridge. As now the landvogt comes to the same house, and Stauffacher, who stood before the house, welcomed him in a friendly manner; the landvogt asked him to whom the house belonged; Stauffacher thought that he did not ask in kindness, therefore he answered," Sir, the house is my lord the king's, and yours, and my fief." The landvogt on this continued, "I will not allow the peasants to build houses without my consent; nor will I have you living as free as if you were yourselves lords; I will prevent you," and rode off with these words. This speech fell heavy on Stauffacher's heart. Now he was a man of sense, had also a wise and clever wife, who saw that something lay heavy on his mind, and persuaded him to tell her what speech the landvogt had held with him. When she had heard it, she spoke to him, "My dear husband, you know that many pious country people also complain of the landvogt's tyranny, therefore it were good that some of you who can trust to each other hold council together in secret, how you can escape his arbitrary power." Then Stauffacher thinking within himself, "the woman's counsel would not be bad," followed it, drove to Uri, and remarked that all the country people were impatient and hostile to the landvogt, yet he entrusted the affair only to a confidential gentleman in Uri, named Walter Fuerst. He told him of the youth of Unterwalden, Arnold of Melchthal, how he still remained with them in Uri, but went often in secret to his family, and said that the young man might be trusted. Therefore he was likewise called, and the three men were agreed that each in his country should levy people in whom he could trust, in order to re-conquer their old freedom and to expel the tyrannical landvogts. It was also agreed upon how they would

THE OATH OF THE THREE SWISS.

65

come together at night in the Ruettli, a solitary woody place by the Lake of the Four Cantons.

On the Wednesday night before Martin's day, Walter Fuerst, Melchthal, and Stauffacher brought each ten upright men of his country to this place. Here they pledged one another with their hands, that none of them would venture anything in this affair according to his own opinion; none would leave the other: they would not deprive the Counts of Hapsburg of the least thing in all their estates, rights, and their own people: the Vogts, their followers, their servants and paid men should not lose a drop of blood; but the freedom which they had received from their forefathers, the same would they preserve and transmit to their grandchildren. Thereupon all three-and-thirty raised their hands and took this oath, by God and all his saints.

Thus this alliance was first made and sworn by these three men in Uri, whence arose the Swiss confederation.

This relation has been adopted by Schiller in his William Tell. But, alas, for the fame of this great hero himself! If ever, for once, tradition seems to have " a habitation and a name," we should have thought that it had been that of William Tell. The localities seemed all ascertained; a long array of names, still legible in Tell's famous chapel on the lake, seemed to vouch for the authenticity of his history. The act, so strikingly peculiar, of shooting the apple, stares the traveller in the face as he passes Altorf. And yet stern criticism, at first in whispers, then in learned dissertations, boldly proclaimed the story to be without foundation, and Tell himself to have had no existence-to be a mere creation of the brain. Well might the Swiss be excused if they spurned these imputations with patriotic indignation. But the critics at length made themselves heard. The chroniclers who record his heroic deeds were not contemporary with the events which they related: the chapel was built in 1388: it is affirmed, it is true, that of the visitors, one hundred and fourteen had known Tell himself; we must not, however, forget, that more than eighty years had passed since Tell had shot the apple from the head of his son and freed his country from the tyrant Gessler. Yet this testimony, although insufficient to confirm the single events which have raised him to be the national hero of Switzerland, seem to us abundantly sufficient to refute those writers who deny the personal existence of Tell. A similar story of the apple is told in the old legends of Scandinavia. Saxo Grammaticus relates it of a Danish king Harold and a certain Toko. Now we believe that there exists in the Haessli Dale in Switzerland a tradition that their ancestors in distant times migrated thither from the far north. It is likewise not a little singular that a similar story is related of a William Tell and a Count of Seedorf, a great landed proprietor in Uri; but this must have happened early in the

VOL. II.

twelfth century. Prizes have been offered for the best essays on this interesting subject; the Swiss archives have been diligently consulted, and extracts published, in which we do not find the name of Gessler among the lists of bailiffs, or landvogts, in the castle of Kuessnacht. The name of Tell, however, is found, but no action of any eminence is recorded of him; the cause of the origin of the rising, which terminated in the establishment of the Swiss free confederacy, differs in the official documents from that assigned in the popular legend. The story of the apple and of the homage done to the cap seem certainly, at first sight, to wear a fabulous appearance; fortunately the heroic valour of the Swiss has been too firmly recorded in history to suffer any diminution by the refutation of this most poetical of all popular traditions.

BAMBOROUGH CASTLE.

Thy tower, proud Bamborough, marked they there,

King Ida's castle, huge and square,
From its tall rock look grimly down,
And on the swelling ocean frown;
Then from the coast they bore away,
And reached the Holy Island's bay."

MARMION, Canto II.

OUR description of this interesting relic of the olden time is abridged from the Penny Cyclopædia, which contains the only authentic description which we have been able to meet with. The ancient city of Bamborough, or Bambury, was, according to Bede, called Bebba, from a queen of that name, and King Alfred calls it "the kingly burgh, which men nameth Bebbanburgh." Ida, says the Saxon chronicle, began to reign in the year 547, and was twelve years King of Northumberland, and built Bebbanburgh, which he first enclosed with a hedge, and afterwards with a wall. It is now only a small village, although it formerly sent two members to parliament. The castle is one of the oldest in the kingdom, and stands on a perpendicular rock, close to the sea, one hundred and fifty feet above its level. It is only accessible on the south-east side. The remains of Ida's castle are supposed to form part of the present building. Within the keep is an ancient draw-well, one hundred and forty-five feet deep, cut through the solid basaltic rock into the sandstone below.