Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/80

 9, 1854.] him.” The Duke of Buckingham was similarly hurt; the Lord Sandys and Marquis of Dorset likewise.

In the Paston Letters, John Paston, writing to a friend, relates, as a piece of news, that the Earl of Oxford, making a sally from a castle where he was besieged, was shot through the bars of his helmet. “This day,” says the writer, laconically, “I saw the man that did it, and there I leave him.” And to select only one additional, out of a thousand recorded instances, Shakespeare introduces Prince Hal at Shrewsbury fight, wounded through the open visor, all the rest of his body being protected by his steel coat.

Although the more robust of our old English yeomanry, with a stout Spanish yew-bow, could give to his flight, or lighter shafts, a range of twenty-four score, the ordinary distance at which they succeeded in wounding or killing man and horse was twelve score, or 240 yards. By the statute, 33rd Henry VIII., no youth having attained his full vigour was permitted, under a considerable fine, to practise at any shorter marks. Some very noticeable instances of their success at this distance occur in the older chronicles. Drayton introduces a grey-haired veteran endeavouring to excite the youth of his day to join the expedition destined for France, which resulted in the famous victory of Agincourt, by recounting the feats of archery traditionally handed down by those who “drew a good bow at Cressy.” He describes

How like a lyon they about them laid.

And, boy,” quoth he, “I’ve heard thy grandsire say,

That once he did an English archer see,

Who, shooting at a French, twelve score away,

Quite through the body, nail’d him to a tree.”

I have just now alluded to Sir Walter Scott’s attempted word-picture of a mediæval bow meeting at Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Although the great intellectual giant of the North knew most things connected with the usages of bygone times, he clearly knew nothing of bow meetings, ancient or modern. This is more extraordinary, since he passed so large a portion of his life in Edinburgh, the seat of one famous ancient society, the Royal Scottish Archer Guard, about 1200 strong, their place of tryst being just in the city suburbs. Of course I speak of him and his wonderful fictions with all due respect, but would beg any archer to inform me, if he can, what is meant by Locksley “bending his shaft” against De Bracy? We bend a bow, but always keep our shafts as straight as possible. Secondly. He speaks of removing the targets previously shot at. Every archæologist knows, or ought to know, that targets were not invented for more than four centuries after, the marks in King John’s time being a green earthen mound or butt, and, of course, stationary. Why does he describe circles thereupon, when the central mark was merely a square piece of rag, termed a “clout”? The feat of nocking, not notching, an arrow, or splitting that of an adversary with your own, which he so carefully describes, is mere fable, never performed: the nock of a shaft, being about the thickness of a goose-quill, is invisible to the eye at thirty paces, let alone the distance they were shooting, nearly the eighth part of a mile. Unless he could see, he could not aim thereat; unless striking by aim, the feat is nought. Locksley then substitutes a peeled willow wand for the target’s broad surface, at which the author absurdly makes Hubert express great astonishment, exclaiming, “My grandsire drew a good bow at Hastings, and never shot at such a mark in his life. If this yeoman can cleave that rod, I yield to the devil that’s in his jerkin. A man can do but his best; I might as well shoot at the edge of our parson’s whittle, or at a wheaten straw, or at a sunbeam, as that twinkling white streak that I can hardly see.” Now all this is picturesque enough, an it were in costume. Remember, the space for the wand was 100 yards only; and, so far from a peeled willow looking painfully indistinct so far off, take the word of an experienced bowman, that it is then just as palpable out against the clear blue ether, as if close to you. And wherefore should a yeoman of the thirteenth century be in a maze at the feat? It was parlous common in his age and for succeeding centuries. Every skilled archer tried his hand at it; allusions are frequent enough. One of this same Locksley’s bandit-foresters was famous for doing it “right yeomanly and well,” as his master would have said—

Clyfton, with a bearing arrow,

He clave the willow wand.

And I shrewdly suspect some half dozen of our modern toxophilites, including many a bright-eyed Clorinda, would deem lightly of the feat, and perform it too, as will be seen by their “scores and hits” presently quoted. What Sir Walter says about “looking well to his bow, and changing his bowstring,” for the purpose of trying one final shot, is also mere verbiage, signifying nothing in an archer’s ears.