OF BOWMEN
ANDREW BELL
Though
it is feared that this article with never win the Booker Prize, I hope it
does more than fill some otherwise blank space in the publication, and
that you enjoy the ramblings. Please forgive my self-indulgence, having
had some notoriety from my previous article, I have transcribed a further
‘trip down memory lane’. The memory this time centres on myself and my
new found passion that of Archery. The ‘Digest’ certainly stimulates
memory. In a more reflective mood I ask you the reader, were people in our
youth more colourful or has time just faded the colours to the harshness
of black and white, sharpening the focus thus making them and their deeds
more polarized?
My
Father and others of his generation related many a tale to me. These tales
become an oral history, a transference of consciousness from one
generation to another, though no doubt the representation will become
tarnished or garnished by time, creating a saga, tragedy, or myth. The
trick is to get them down on paper before they are lost for many a myth
becomes history and via versa.
Where
to start this saga? well from the ‘very beginning, a very good place to
start’, as Julie Andrews would sing in the ‘Sound of Music’. So I
will attempt in a roundabout way to tell you why I lug (and
that is a very good word which we will come back to) around a Longbow and
have found a passion in Archery.
Though
now living in Auckland, New Zealand, I was brought up in, Ferrybridge,
Yorkshire, and in the days of Robin Hood, that famous stretch of woodland,
Sherwood Forest, extended across most of that belt of England. Not far
from my home on Doncaster Road heading south along the A1 was Robin Hood’s
Well, where legend has it; the famous man dressed in his best Lincoln
Green met his true love.
Just
to the north and a steady bike ride away (to a young lad) was Towton Moor,
where Yorkshire Bowmen, released an arrow-storm on the Lancastrian forces
during the ‘War of the Roses’. But perhaps more poignantly, during the
excavation for Ferrybridge ‘C’ Power Station, a Neolithic grave was
uncovered (some 12,000 to 14,000 years old) containing flint arrowheads
and knife.
So
with this background, and watching Lorne Green in the ‘Tales of Robin
Hood’ on TV, it was perhaps inevitable that I would pick up a longbow
and start archery. Indeed to an Anglo-Saxon, the longbow has as much
reverence as the Samurai sword to the Japanese. The bow had been in use
for thousands of years, to provide food for the table, and had been used
in various forms as an instrument of battle, but nothing until the
introduction of the ‘Multi-Barrelled Rocket Launcher’ compared to or
surpasses the English War bow. With a pull of and often exceeding 150lbs,
which cast an arrow at 180 feet per second (for the youngsters that’s
about 190 Km/hr) this truly was the tank, artillery and aircraft of its
day. This weapon when employed en mass was the great leveller;
Warrior Kings, knight, solider and peasants alike were swept from the
battlefield. English Kings actively encouraged the lower classes to use
the bow, ordering that every man "should practice the bow".
Whereas, other European nations, and in particular the French, did not
like to see the hoi poli getting ideas above their station in life, but
after Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt the faith in the English Longbow was
rewarded.
As
suggested earlier, the bow was not an English prerogative - all nations,
civilisations and regions have used the bow at some time, including as
part of their military armoury. However, the bow was an auxiliary weapon,
to be used only when great phalanx of men were not locked in combat or
when cavalry were not employed, there may have been archers engaging
targets of opportunity, but here sword and spear held supreme. However,
English Kings employed vast companies of archers as part of the body of
their armies, with the war bow they could effectively, deter, diminish,
and or defeat opposing forces before the mêlée had commenced. In fact if
the longbow had been employed during the Napoleonic Wars, the raw
mathematics of killing power would have made Wellington’s victories
faster and sweeter, since the longbow’s firing rate and accuracy were
much greater than that of the smoothbore musket.
So
as a small boy (yes I was small once), I took to arms with a bow that my
Dad made out of a Willow (of all things) foraged from the trees in the old
graveyard of St. Andrew’s Church, alongside of the marsh and railway. My
Mum stitched a leather handgrip and quiver. Arrows were from a variety of
sources, elderberry from the embankment on the Vale Terrace, Bamboo from
my Dads garden and hazel from Ken Bagley’s orchard, the house we were
eventually to move in to.
For
two or three years along with my mates, Paul Smith, the Parkin’s, the
Palmer’s, our own Maid Marion, Bev Johnson, and the rest of the
Elizabeth Drive Gang, we fought enemies on foreign fields, stalked wild
game on the ‘Dark Continent’ and took the ‘Golden Arrow’ at
Nottingham, along with my fellow ‘Merry Men’ in the depths of our
imagination and the fields and woods surrounding the village, (Carr’s
Field, Cathi Lane, Brotherton Marsh and the Canal Path).
As
most people do, I grew-up (well mostly according to my wife) and moved on,
but the bow always held that allure and I would regress to childhood with
toy versions bought for my two young sons. I remember daydreaming after
Costner’s Robin Hood and I would find any excuse to look at bows in
sport shops. Finally, 38 years later and after reading a book called ‘Harlequin’
by Bernard Cornwell I stopped fantasizing and purchased my ‘hearts
desire’ an English Longbow, the full 72 inches, along with cloth-yard
length wooden arrows, and got them shipped out to New Zealand. And the
rest they say is history! Though I must say reality is much harder than
fantasy, having taken part in the Trans-Tasmin Master Games between
Australia and New Zealand, which my club hosted in March 2004.
Well
back to that word ‘lug’: well in the old native
Yorkshire dialect, that is what a bow was called. The word refers to a
bell-rope, but in the vernacular the meaning relates to the drawing or ‘lugging’
a bow-string, thus it became known locally as a lug. As most reader will
also know ‘lug’ in Yorkshire can also mean to carry something
awkward.
Andrew G. Bell
Also by Andrew Bell:
Echoes of the Past - Myth or History
Reach Your Potential
Letter From the Front