of his brother Bjoern, and Hemingr performed the feat [Mueller's _Saga
Bibl._, 3, 359]. In the middle of the fourteenth century, the
_Malleus Maleficarum_ refers it to Puncher, a magician of the
Upper Rhine. Here in England, we have it in the old English
ballad of _Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough_, and _William of
Cloudesly_, where William performs the feat [see the ballad in
Percy's _Reliques_]. It is not at all of Tell in Switzerland
before the year 1499, and the earlier Swiss chronicles omit it
altogether. 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 famous
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 crystallized 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].

Nor let any pious Welshman be shocked if we venture to assert that
Gellert, that famous hound upon whose last resting-place the
traveller comes as he passes down the lovely vale of Gwynant, is a
mythical dog, and never snuffed the fresh breeze in the forest of
Snowdon, nor saved his master's child from ravening wolf. This, too,
is a primaeval story, told with many variations. Sometimes the foe is
a wolf, sometimes a bear, sometimes a snake. Sometimes the faithful
guardian of the child is an otter, a weasel, or a dog. It, too, came
from the East. It is found in the _Pantcha-Tantra_, in the
_Hitopadesa_, in Bidpai's _Fables_, in the Arabic original of
_The Seven Wise Masters_, that famous collection of stories
which illustrate a stepdame's calumny and hate, and in many mediaeval