Why a Site for the Longbow?
Surely few things, if any, can claim the same length of association with mankind as can the longbow. A bowyer working in the South Tyrol 3,300 years before the birth of Christ made a bow for a man found frozen in the ice of the Alps in 1991; the bowyers indented to the Crown who made the bows stored on board the Mary Rose which sank in 1545 crafted the same weapon; and there are bowyers today making bows to the exact same pattern. I can think of no other object that would be immediately as recognisable to a Neothlithic man, as to a German tribesman living during the Roman Iron Age, or a Cheshire yeoman living under the reign of the Lancastrians, or an amateur bowman or woman living today.
So what do I mean by the term longbow, the subject of this piece. The British Long Bow Societys definition is as follows:
" A long bow is defined as the traditional type with stacked belly, horn nocks, and limbs made of wood only. All surfaces shall be convex."
Thus I am excluding such popular variants as the American flat bow, the Japanese maru-ki and shige-to-yumi, and various primitive bows. My subject is Northern European, my focus is mainly on the British Isles.
This article is not intended to be taken too seriously: it is an introduction to a web-site not an essay on social history, and I apologize if my style is a little too heavy in places. Nevertheless I think it is appropriate to offer some insight into the motivation behind my enthusiasm, if only so that the reader can judge for themself whether they have any sympathy with my stance or not.
So, to return to my first theme, which is the idea of a continuing line of craftsmen stretching back through history, this thread, the concept of some common shared experience with people otherwise distant from us in history, is one of the many attractions of the longbow to me.
Historical re-enactment has recently come into its own as a recreation and form of education, but the idea behind it is not new. Architecture, representational art, and literature, have all had their phases of nostalgically referring to an earlier time; take for example Palladianism or Victorian Gothic in architecture, or the romanticised mediaevalism of the Pre-Raphaelites. Each of these movements has tried to capture some aspect of the past, and each attempt has fallen short as an obviously contrived artiface.
I suggest in the same way a re-enactment group can only strive to create an impression of that which is their subject: at the end of the day, even the most ardently enthusiastic legionary cannot master conversational latin, and we know when he goes home he reverts to being a bus driver, just as the Palace of Westminster is just a Victorian public building.
My point is not to demean the efforts of living history enthusiasts, (which on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Kent may seem a very agreeable way of spending one's time), nor is it to diminish the achievements of Inigo Jones, Pugin, Rossetti, or Morris, but to suggest that forms of historical recreation can only ever be partially successful. However, when shooting in the longbow the archer shares some of the experience of all longbowmen, and his or her experience is as valid as those familiar bowmen found in the Luttrell Psalter. The bow is the same, and putting aside distracting arguments about draw weights, the archery is the same. I find that commonality a fascinating aspect of the subject.
Archers practising at the butts, from the Luttrell psalter (British Museum) |
Key to this unaltered continuity is the success of the original design, and an understanding of exploiting the property of wood, of which more later. One of my gripes concerning modern conceptions of ancient peoples is that perceived patronising attitude which says how clever it is of pre-industrial societies to manage to create artefacts and structures which impress us today. It is surely one of the innate abilities which has ensured the success of our species that we can recognise the qualities of the materials we find in our environment, and exploit those qualities to our own ends. Possibly our modern perception is now flawed by having too great a luxury of materials at hand. The Neolithic Iceman mentioned above was found with equipment made from 18 different types of wood: that degree of awareness of materials is lost to us.
An extreme and possibly fatuous example will serve as an illustration of my point. There is a common and shared sense of the most effective use of the best materials in say the design of the longbow (if you can use the term design to describe an obviously evolutionary process) and the programme of Cathedral building in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The craftsmen who built these cathedrals were able to exploit the pick of naturally occurring materials to create buildings which would dominate the landscape, create a sense of awe in the population, give evidence of the might and majesty of the Church, and reflect the glory of God. In all of these objectives they succeed, even today. The bow is designed to store kinetic energy and efficiently transfer it to the arrow. In both cases it can be argued that contemporary technologies can and have done better - if you require a weapon of war, a machine-gun is a better bet; if you need to bring home dinner, a supermarket is more convenient; but my point is this; for a challenging and absorbing Sunday morning shoot in good company there is no better bow. Exploiting stone and wood alone, no better solution to these two requirements has been offered. It has taken the development of exotic modern materials to build more efficient and effective bows, and Im not sure whether any modern building can better the achievement of Salisbury cathedral.
I would think that any engineer would admire the simplicity of design of the longbow; indeed P. H. Blyths appendix to Hardys Longbow concludes: "There may be considerable gaps in our understanding, but there seems no reason to doubt that the traditional longbow, subject to the limitations of climate, represents something close to an optimum design." The success of that design explains its longevity.
I am full of admiration for people who can work with materials so successfully, and it is an ability that I envy.
Having had two bows break, one explosively, I doubt however that I would have the nerve ever attempt to make a bow myself, even if I were able to master the skills involved. The genius of the design of the longbow is in the exploitation of the properties of the wood. The wood for a longbow is yew, but as it is poisonous, and difficult to work with, many other woods are used. My bows are made of composites; lemonwood (dagame), hickory, and osage, and my favourite has a plank of yew within it. Hardy provides a list of alternates which includes, yellow lance-wood, red cedar, black walnut, red mulberry, common elm, wych elm, chittam or smoke tree, fustic, snake-wood, ruby, locust, sassafras, stopper-wood, brazil, beef-wood, greenheart, ironwood, amaranth, rosewood, cornelwood, crab-apple, and laburnum. But without doubt yew has no peers.
The best bows are self-bows, that is to say made from a single piece of timber, and consist of both heartwood and sapwood. The heartwood forms the belly of the bow (that which is nearest the archer) and the sapwood becomes the back of the bow. This distinction is clear in most contemporary illustrations, and it is this natural characteristic of the wood that many modern bowyers seek to emulate by use of laminates of different woods. The beauty of yew though is that the sapwood has the properties of a natural spring, which is augmented by the compression of the heartwood.
English Longbowmen causing discomforture to the French. (Biblioteque Nationale, Paris). |
In July of 1992 I had the privilege of watching a bowyer at work at the Tower of London who made the most beautiful self yew bows, boned and polished to a silk finish. His work is at one extreme of a range that runs to the rough and lumpy elm bows described by Giraldus Cambrensis. I share with all archers a humbling admiration for the craftsmen who create these wonderful things.
Any modern archer is aware that the subject of their recreation once served as a weapon of war and as a means of hunting game, and that the various aspects of the modern sport, target shoots, clout, roving, field shoots etc., all derive from practising to use the bow for these ends. Our society rightly identifies these as distant in history and disassociated from the modern usage of the bow (I'm sorry if I cause offence to anyone who hunts using a bow, which is illegal in this country, but I see no justification for causing suffering for entertainment). However, the longbowman and longbowwoman shoot in the shadow of medieval men who used the bow in war and peace, and the legacy of those men represents to my mind a fascinating aspect of our shared social history.
Finally then, the final cornerstone of my passion, and that which is least amenable to bare description, the simple love of shooting in the longbow. If you are an archer, and have never shot a longbow then borrow one and shoot a few ends. If youve never shot a bow then find a club and try. Your shoulders and neck will ache, youll plant dozens of arrows in the grass, and in the timberwork of the target, but eventually youll hear that most satisfying solid thud of pile into straw. If you already are a longbowman or woman, then youll no doubt agree with Roger Aschams description, written in 1544, of
"a pastime honest for the mind, wholesome for the body, fit for every man, vile for no man, using the day and open place for honesty to rule it: not lurking in corners for misorder to abuse it. "
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