Shooting an apple off one's child's head of the story is in the legend of William Tell, supposedly happening to start off the Swiss revolution, written first in the 15th-century "White Book of Sarnen", then in Aegidius Tschudi's 16th-century "Chronicon Helveticum", and later the basis for Friedrich Schiller's 1804 play. Tell is arrested for failing to bow in respect to the hat that the newly appointed Austrian "Vogt", Albrecht Gessler, has placed on a pole, and Gessler commands him to shoot an apple off his son's head with a single bolt from his crossbow. After splitting the apple with the single shot (supposedly on November 18, 1307),
Shooting an apple off one's child's head to try whether Egill shot so well as was said or not, so he let Egill's son, a boy of three years old, be taken, and made them put an apple on his head, and bade Egill shoot so that the shaft struck neither above the head nor to the left nor the right. Like Palnatoki, he keeps two more arrows to kill the king in case he fails, but the king does not punish him for saying so, but rather praises him: "The king took that well from him, and all thought it was boldly spoken." The best-known version