The Crooked Stick

In modern images of ‘Robin Hood’, the outlaw cannot be separated from his so-called ‘longbow’. But the terms ‘longbow’ nor ‘longbowman’ were never in contemporary use (the term is first used in the Paston letters of the fifteenth century) and there has been an erroneous belief that the bow used in the Hundred Years War was some revolutionary new development which assured the English victories at Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415). As Robert Hardy explains in his excellent book, ‘Longbow’:

A longbow is only a bow that is long rather than short.

Although details are partly obscure and controversial, it is now almost certain that the bow, used throughout the Hundred Years War, had been used in basically the same form, from the time of the Celtic tribes in Britain up to the time of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest.

A Saxon riddle gives us an insight into the use of an early bow:

“Wob’s my name, if you work it out;
I’m a fair creature fashioned for battle.
When I bend, and shoot a deadly shaft
From my stomach, I desire only to send
That poison as far away as possible.
When my lord, who devised this torment for me,
Releases my limbs, I become longer
And bent upon slaughter, spit out
That deadly poison I swallowed before.
No man’s parted easily from the object
I describe; if he’s struck by what flies
From my stomach, he pays for its poison
With his strength-speedy atonement for his life.
I’ll serve no master when unstrung, only when
I’m cunningly notched. Now guess my name.”

The Vikings and Saxons had a general disregard for the bow as a weapon of war though, preferring the axe or spear. But the bow was often used for hunting and in small skirmishes. The Viking bow was made from yew, ash or elm and appears in many of their sagas and poems. In the Viking tale Brennu-Njals it describes how Gunnar was able to kill ten men before his bow string was cut by his attackers.

The reason there are very few references to ‘bows’ in surviving Saxon records might be because a single word describes both a throwing spear and arrows. But in the Saxon song about the battle of Maldon in 991 there is the line ‘bogan waeron bysige,’ ‘bows were busy’. Hole House in Branscombe Devon is said to have been built by Simon de Holcombe a Saxon bowman who fought at the Battle of Hastings. But at the time of the Norman Conquest, it seems that very few archers were employed in Anglo-Saxon military service-although William the Conqueror took Norman bowman to England in 1066 and they seem to have been more effective. Nine archers can be seen in the lower border of the Bayeux Tapestry with large bows and Henry of Huntingdon and the Bayeux Tapestry hold that the Saxon king Harold was killed when shot in the eye by a Norman arrow.

Richard the Lionheart preferred the use of the crossbow during his Crusade in the Holy Land, although the weapon had incurred the wrath of the Pope who issued an edict forbidding the weapon, describing it as ‘hateful to God.’ But Richard I continued to favour its use in his army and when he was shot by a cross bow bolt during the siege of Challus in 1199, many believed it to be God’s vengeance on him for ‘wicked use of the evil instrument.’

Henry II did not mention ‘bows’ in his Assize of Arms in 1181, but evidence suggests that he did use them in his armies. It might well be that the authorities hesitated to recommend the keeping of a bow in every poor freeman's cottage because of the very strong temptation to employ it for poaching!

But the English continued to use the standard bow and while continental armies continued to adopt the crossbow in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the English bowman achieved several successes, notably at the Battle of the Standard in 1138. It was here that King Stephen’s English knights fought on foot and aided by a large body of archers made havoc of the charging Scottish line.

During Henry II’s Irish campaigns many Anglo-Norman archers were used, led by the legendry Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke (b.c.1130-d.1176) and his Welsh bowman. Like his father, Richard was given the nickname ‘Strongbow’ (first recorded in Tintern Abbey in 1223) because of his legendry strength and ability with a bow. He quite possibly learnt this skill from the tenants of his earldom.

In the chronicles of Ralph, Earl of Hereford (d.1257) there is a description of the Saxon horseman being ambushed by Welsh archers that shot so accurately and strongly that ‘the English people fled’ and in the traditional but controversial history of the bow, it holds that sometime during the thirteenth century in South Wales (another school of thought suggest that the ‘longbow’ was Scandinavian in origin) the English encountered a longer version of the bow (about the same size as the archer). With its string drawn to the ear instead of the chest, it gave the archer the ability to fire armour piercing arrows over a distance of about 200 meters.

During the siege of Abergavenny Castle in 1182 the chronicler Gerald of Wales repeatedly describes the men of Monmouth as being more skilled in archery than any other Welshman. He describes how Welsh arrows had penetrated an oak door:

“Two soldiers ran over a bridge to take refuge in one of the castle towers. Welsh archers, shooting from behind them, drove their arrows into the oak door of the tower with such force that the arrowheads penetrated the wood of the door which was nearly a hand thick; and the arrows were preserved in that door as a memento.”

But even before his first Welsh war in 1277 Edward had picked a special force of 100 archers, unmixed with spearmen from his own lands in Macclesfield. They served from the first day of the war, which broke out later in that year, to the very last at the then extraordinary wage of 3d per day, when the rate for mounted lances was 1s and for infantrymen 2d a day. Longshank’s handpicked bowman with two other archer battalions from Gwent and Crickhowell were the start of a significant change in English strategy and tactics.

Edward I undoubtedly discovered, during the Welsh wars, the virtues of archery in attack to break up a defensive infantry formation and also its power in defence when based on array of dismounted knights and men at arms.

In the Pipe Rolls of 1277/8 a detailed budget exists showing payments by King Edward I to crossbowman, archers and spearman between July 18th and November 10th of £4,762. Other payments to archers-not including gifts– amounted to about £400.

At the battle of Orewin Bridge, near Builth in 1282, when Prince Llewelyn was surprised and killed; King Edward’s army had advanced against them with archers interposed with cavalry. The arrows inflicted such a heavy loss on the Welsh troops that it caused them to loosen their cohesion and the English cavalry were able to ride them down. The Earl of Warwick later used similar tactics during the battle at Maes Maydog near Conway in 1295, when the archers ‘intermingled with the horse.’ Amongst his army, the Earl of Warwick had used mainly English bowman.

But, it was the English victory against William Wallace at Falkirk in 1298, that is often used a benchmark in the evolution of archers in battle. It was here that King Edward’s 10,000 bowman (made up mainly of Welsh, a ratio of three archers to one mounted man-at arms) took a dreadful toll on the closely packed Scottish infantry. As the gaps in the ranks increased from the ceaseless hail of arrows, Longshank’s cavalry were able to crash their way through the crumbling ranks of Scottish pikemen. No English commander could fail to be impressed or to see the tactical lesson that had been set out before him.

So it seems certain that King Edward I had learned the military importance of the bow. This simple piece of mechanism finally became a recognised military arm of great importance to England. Cavalry was helpless against well-trained archers. Edward in his Statute of Winchester (1285) insisted that ‘all persons with an income of less than a 100 pence in land were to possess a bow and arrows and practice on Sundays and Holidays.’ Attitudes towards the humble bow had changed. It had become an ‘invincible’ weapon’ in the hands of a skilled archer and gradually gave rise to a new class of bowman-the yeoman archer and what the French ruefully called his ‘crooked stick.’

© Clement of the Glen 2008

Whistling Arrows?

The use of whistling arrows, by Robin and his band of outlaws in Disney’s Story of Robin Hood, is a unique addition to the legend by Lawrence Edward Watkin. But not as far fetched as some might think.

In fact, although now hardly ever used, whistling arrows were invented probably by the Nomads of Central Asia around 1,500 years ago. They used the whistling arrows to enliven their celebration of bumper harvests and major festivals. The earliest literary Chinese reference to such an arrow is in the Historical Annals of Sima Quian and it was Miedun who made whistling arrows and drilled his troops in their use. He ordered that:

when the whistling arrow is fired, anyone who does not obey the person who fired it will be executed...

Arrow whistles and whistling arrows are in fact two separate objects and have separate uses. A whistling arrow has a sharp point and can be a lethal projectile. An arrow whistle has a whistle but no sharp point and is used mainly for signalling and can be made of bronze, iron, wood, bone or horn.

Mongolians often used arrow whistles during hunting, after they discovered that the sound of the arrow flying above the animal’s head, made it stop, giving time to loose a second conventional arrow for the kill.

But apart from hunting, the whistling arrow was primarily used for signalling and sending messages during battle, particularly amongst the Japanese, who would often tie small notes (called Ya-Burne) around the shaft of the arrow as it whined through the air. This sound that the whistling arrow made, was also used against the opposition as a form of psychological warfare during battle and the Japanese often would have their massed ranks of archers send off hundreds of whistling arrows, filling the sky with an eerie, threatening noise above the heads of the enemy. In Samurai times such whistling arrows were fired to signify the beginning of a battle. In Shinto archery rituals, whistling arrows are used to call upon the attention of the gods.

Whistling arrows were used in medieval Europe, although details of this are rather slim. But it is known that they were combined with barbed arrows during battle and targeted at the charging horses to send the animals into panic and confusion. Therefore disrupting the advancing knights.

© Clement of the Glen

Song Of The Bow by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

What of the bow?
The bow was made in England:
Of true wood, of yew wood,
The wood of English bows;
So men who are free
Love the old yew tree
And the land where the yew tree grows.

What of the cord?
The cord was made in England:
A rough cord, a tough cord,
A cord that bowmen love;
So we'll drain our jacks
To the English flax
And the land where the hemp was wove.

What of the shaft?
The shaft was cut in England:
A long shaft, a strong shaft,
Barbed and trim and true;
So we'll drink all together
To the gray goose feather
And the land where the gray goose flew.

What of the men?
The men were bred in England:
The bowman--the yeoman--
The lads of dale and fell
Here's to you--and to you;
To the hearts that are true
And the land where the true hearts dwell.

The Grey Goose Feather

*Somtyme I was an archere good,

A styffe and eke a stronge;

I was compted the best archere

That was in mery Englonde.

*A Gest of Robyn Hode

It was during the last quarter of the thirteenth century that the longbow man became recognised as an effective part of the English army. Richard I (1189-1199) preferred crossbowmen on foot in conjunction with cavalry, but during Edward I’s (1272-1307) Welsh wars he discovered the true value of a skilled archer and laid the foundation of the longbow as a military weapon, that was to shock the French between the 1340’s and 1420’s.
Gerald of Wales had recorded, in about 1188 its deadly uses by the men of South Wales, during the Norman invasion of Ireland.

William de Braose also testifies that, in the war against the Welsh, one of his men-at-arms was struck by an arrow shot at him by a Welshman. It went right through his thigh, high up, where it was protected outside and inside the leg by his iron thigh armour, and then through the skirt of his leather tunic; next it penetrated that part of the saddle which is called the alva or seat; and finally it lodged in his horse, driving it so deep it killed the animal.

Quickly realising its potential, Edward I started by combining Welsh and English bowman with awesome effect against the Scots at Falkirk in 1298.

A landmark in the history of archery had been reached in 1252 with Henry III’s Assize of Arms. It confirmed the recognition of the bow by the English and its importance in warfare. And declared that in a time of emergency (posse comittatus) commissioners were to select as paid soldiers, citizens with chattels worth more than nine marks and less than twenty. They should be armed with bow, arrows and a sword. A special clause was included for poor men with less than this who could bring bows and arrows if they owned them. But those living within or near a Royal Forest had to keep their arrows blunt.

There are no surviving bows from the early Middle Ages and only five from the Renaissance, but they are similar in construction. All five are ‘self bows’, that is made from a single stave of wood, shaped in order to use the centre and sap wood and symmetrically tapered. The favourite wood was Spanish Yew or Wych Elm, Elm or Ash. Because of our wetter climate English Yew was courser grained and therefore not as popular.

Bows were made by a craftsman called a Bowyer. First, logs of yew were cut into thin sections called ‘bow staves’. These were then stored for three to four years to ‘season’, before being ready for the bowyer to shape into slender bows. The bow stave is cut from the radius of the tree so that the sapwood (on the outside of the tree) becomes the back and the heartwood becomes the belly. The lighter sapwood (on the outside curve, facing the target) would aid spring, whilst the darker heartwood (on the inside) would aid compression.

The bow strings were made of twine, which in turn, was made from hemp and flax plants. Ash was a popular wood for arrows, although most wood was suitable and the feathers, usually from the grey goose, were stuck on with glue made from bluebell bulbs.

In 1285 Edward I re-enacted the Assize of Arms with his Statute of Winchester ordering that, every man shall have in his house equipment for keeping the peace, according to the ancient assize; that is to say, every man between 15 and 60 years of age shall be assessed and obliged to have arms according to the quality of his lands and goods.

Edward’s Assize ordered that archery should be practised on Sundays and Holidays and thirteen years later, King Edward’s archers concentrated hails of arrows with devastating effect on the Scots during the Battle of Falkirk. In this same year an incident recorded in the “De Banco Roll” gives an excellent description of a bow and arrow used in a murder. A Simon de Skeffington had been shot and killed by a barbed arrow. The wound measured three inches long by two inches wide and was six inches deep. It had been caused by:

….an arrow from a bow, the arrow being barbed with an iron arrow-head 3 inches long and 2 inches broad, the arrow was almost 34 inches long of Ash…….feathered with peacock feathers and the bow being of yew and the bowstring of hemp, the length of the bow being one ell and a half in gross circumference (five feet seven inches long).

In ‘A Gest of Robyn Hode,’ one of the earliest surviving ballads about the outlaw, a knight re-pays Robin a debt:

An every arowe an elle longe,

With pecok wel idyght,

Worked all with white silver;

It was a seemly sight.

* A Gest of Robyn Hode

The advantage of the bow or longbow, as the military version became known, was its relative cheap construction and expandability. Its problem was the training involved to make it an effective killing instrument on the battlefield. So boys from about the age of ten, spent hours in their local churchyard practising at the butts after Mass on Sundays. This compulsory training was essential as the art of drawing a bow took years to perfect. The lightest bow had draw weights of around 100 pounds, the heaviest about 175 pounds, with the bow drawn 'to the ear' (rather than to the corner of the mouth as is common in modern archery). The attachment points for the string were protected by horn ‘nocks’. There was no arrow rest on the handle as on modern bows, with the arrow resting on the index finger. The longbow, often as tall as its owner (sometimes well over 5 ft.), could loose an arrow 180 metres and the best archers could accurately draw and discharge between ten to twelve arrows a minute.

Ascham in ‘Toxophilus’ (1545) wrote, ‘ a perfyte archer must firste learne to knowe the sure flyghte of his shaftes, that he may be boulde always, to trust them.

In 1466 an Act ordered all Englishman, with the exception of judges and clerics, to keep a longbow of their own height and further decreed that every town and village must erect butts at which the citizens were to shoot on Sundays and feast-days, or face a fine of one halfpenny for each failure to do so.

There were three main marks for the archer. The first was the ‘rover’, used in shooting over open ground at uncertain distances. Secondly, the ‘prick’ or ‘clout’ was a small canvas mark with a white circle painted on it and a wooden peg in the centre of the ring. Usually set at distances from 160 to 240 yards ‘prick-shooting’ was intended to teach the archer to be able to shoot as often as necessary over the same distance. The third mark were the ‘Butts’, earthen turfed mounds on which paper discs marked with circles were fixed. They were erected at the public cost in every village up and down the English countryside and their use was frequently enforced to encourage the use of the weapon that brought astonishing victories at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt.

Bishop Latimer (1485-1555) was the son of a yeoman, who as a child had been taught how to use a longbow:

In my time my poor father was as delighted to teach me to shoot as to learn any other thing; and so I think, other men did their children; he taught me how to draw, how to lay my body and my bow, and not to draw with strength of arm as other nations do but with strength of body. I had my bow bought me according to my age and strength; as I increased in them, so my bows were made bigger and bigger; for men will never shoot well, except they be brought up to it. It is a goodly art, a wholesome kind of exercise, and, much commended as physic.

But archery practice became a duty that undoubtedly many tried to evade in one way or another, so to raise the enthusiasm, private matches were set up and archery pageants were organised in local villages. These competitions and games soon became linked with the bold outlaw who became synonymous with accurate shooting of a bow and arrow, Robin Hood.

Philip Stubbs (f. 1583-91) explains how the Summer games incorporated the practice of archery:

Myself remembreth of a childe, in contreye native mine,
A May Game was of Robyn Hood, and of his train, that time,
To train up young men striplings and each other younger childe,
In shooting; yearly this with solemn feast was by the guylde,
Or brotherhood of townsmen.

So the archery practice linked with the summer games and festivals insured the continuing popularity of the outlaw hero.

*Thryce Robyn shot about,
And Always he slist the wand,
And so dyde good Gylberte,
With the wyte hande.

Lytell Johan and good Gylberte,
Were archers good and fre;
Lytell Much and good Reynolde,
The worste they wolde not be.

* A Gest of Robyn Hode

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007