I have some­thing of fas­ci­na­tion with the phe­nom­e­non of urban myths and mis­at­trib­uted quo­ta­tions. In the Jan­u­ary Friends Jour­nal I used the open­ing col­umn to track down “Live sim­ply so that oth­ers may sim­ply live,” a phrase that recurred in many of the arti­cles in the issue (the theme was Quak­er Lifestyles). Among Quak­ers, one of the more oft-told tales involves a mad prophet and his fair-haired noble protege…

It was late April on the north­ern moors and the win­ter had been espe­cial­ly harsh. Flow­ers were just start­ing to peek out of the ground as the farm­ers looked test­ed whether the soil was soft enough yet to plow. The noble­man dis­mount­ed his horse and asked the ham­let’s black­smith for directions.

It has been a long jour­ney. His ruf­fled silk shirt was dirty and full of the smells of a dozens of overnight acco­mo­da­tions in pig barns and lean-tos of the Eng­lish Mid­lands. His most-prized pos­ses­sion was spot­less, how­ev­er: the sil­ver sword giv­en him by his father, the admi­ral, last year on his eigh­teenth birth­day. It layed sheathed in its hand-stiched sheath.

The black­smith point­ed the for­eign­er to the path that crossed the dark moors toward the hill­side of Judge Fel­l’s estate. The manor house was the de fac­to head­quar­ters of the new cult that was scan­dal­iz­ing the King­dom, the Chil­dren of the Light. A short ten minute walk and our trav­el­er was face-to-face with the man he had come so far to see.

A long tum­ble of rehersed speach­es came out of the young man’s mouth as George Fox war­i­ly sized him up. The young William Penn want­ed to join the move­ment. Fox knew it would be a coup for the Chil­dren of the Light. Pen­n’s father was one of the wealth­i­est men in Eng­land and the fam­i­ly mon­ey could buy pro­tec­tion, fame, and land in the new colonies.

But Penn was­n’t quite ready. He had that sword. It would be a grave dis­re­spect to his father to leave it or give it away. “Friend George, what can I do?” The wise Fox knew that Penn was led to join. With a lit­tle encour­age­ment, it was a mat­ter of time the new appren­tice adopt­ed their paci­fist prin­ci­ples. Fox cleared his throat and answered: “Wear thy sword as long as thee can, young William.” Before tears could well in each man’s eyes they turned their atten­tion to logis­tics of a preach­ing trip to Lon­don. On their way out a few days lat­er, Penn qui­et­ly slipped back into a black­smith shop and gave away his sword. By the time they left the York­shire, farm­ers were work­ing the spring soil with their new sil­ver plowshares.

It is a beau­ti­ful sto­ry (which I’ve made even more melo­dra­mat­ic, because why not). Unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s also fake.

Both George Fox and William Penn left behind dozens of vol­umes of writ­ings and mem­oirs. Their friend­ship was one of the most sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ships for each of them. Sure­ly such a foun­da­tion­al sto­ry would have made it to print. Paul Buck­ley tracked down the sto­ry in “Time To Lay Down William Penn’s Sword” in the Decem­ber 2003 Friends Jour­nal.

The sword sto­ry is fake but it is also some­how true. Buck­ley calls it a “authen­tic anec­dote.” Every year Friends Jour­nal gets otherwise-wonderful essays whose nar­ra­tive turns on the sto­ry of William Pen­n’s sword. We can’t run them with­out cor­rec­tion so it falls on me to tell authors that the scene nev­er took place. Occa­sion­al­ly I’m told it does­n’t mat­ter that it’s not true.

What is the deep­er myth inside our beloved tall tales? First: they depend on the celebri­ty sta­tus of their char­ac­ters. If I sub­sti­tut­ed more obscure ear­ly Friends in the sword sto­ry — George White­head ask­ing Solomon Eccles, say — I doubt it would be as com­pelling or get repeat­ed as often.

Fame is an odd draw for modern-day Friends. There’s a baker’s-dozen of famous-enough Friends upon which we graft these sorts of sto­ries — John Wool­man, Lucre­tia Mott, Elias Hicks, Joseph John Gur­ney and his sis­ter Eliz­a­beth Fry. Chang­ing celebri­ty Quak­er’ sto­ries began ear­ly: edi­tors chopped out the embar­ras­ing bits of recently-departed Friends’ jour­nals. Dreams would get snipped out. George Fox’s accounts of mirac­u­lous heal­ings dis­ap­pear with his first edi­tor, pre­sum­ably wor­ried they would sound too wild

It’s prob­a­bly no coin­ci­dence that the Penn/Fox sto­ry dates back to the moment when Amer­i­can Friends split. The denom­i­na­tion’s ori­gin sto­ry was frac­tur­ing. Paul Buck­ley thinks the sword sto­ry pre­fig­ured the tol­er­ance and for­bear­ance of the Hick­site Friends. Philadelphia-area Friends healed that par­tic­u­lar wound almost three-quarters of a cen­tu­ry ago. What does it say about us today that this tale is still so pop­u­lar? Relat­ed read­ing, I tracked down anoth­er authen­tic anec­dote in 2016, “Bring peo­ple to Christ / Leave them there.”