Bartley Tell is the lesser known son of William Tell and younger brother of Walter Tell. As the story goes…..in order to keep from getting executed, William Tell, who was an expert marksman was forced to shoot an apple that sat squarely on top of his son Walters head. Well….as many know, William split the apple in two without incident and father and son lived a full life.
The part of the story that predates this famous tale is how did William gain such confidence with the cross-bow? Rumors had been floating around about a young man in town that walked around with an arrow clean through his head always complaining of a splinter and sometimes of a massive headache but seemed unaware of the cause even though he had been told by the town doctor on multiple occasions why he might be experiencing these problems.
It was as though the words fell upon deaf ears because the very next day Bartley would be out walking the streets of the town complaining again seemingly without any clue as to the previous day’s conversation. After a while the doctor made the determination that the arrow that was lodged in Bartley’s skull had somehow damaged the part of the brain that holds long term memory.
The doctor was speaking to a friend at the local pub about Bartley’s curious injury. At the same time in the same pub a local man was talking about Williams Tell's tale that had transpired the previous day and after many pints of beer and a lot of jovial conversation the two stories collided and it somehow was determined that Bartley was Williams other son who was used as practice from time to time and that was how William had become so accurate with the cross-bow.
This story is of course completely fictitious and if anyone does somehow find the need to believe it…..I would like to offer up some incredibly valuable swamp land at a very discounted price….I will even go so far as to say that half of the proceeds of the sale will go to the completely fictitious Bartley relief fund. A fund dedicated to helping those in need of headache relief with discounted Ibuprofen.
