Archer

“ The young archer rode along the forest path and listened for the singing of the birds, but there was no singing. The forest was silent, and the only noises in it were the scratching of four-footed beasts, the dropping of fir cones, and the heavy stamping of the horse of power in the soft path.
"What has come to the birds?" said the young archer. ”

“ Oh! as the sturdy oak of the forest is laid low by the shaft from heaven, so has their dear father fallen by an arrow from the bow of a strong archer, and these young and tender branches which have sprung forth from his roots, only are left to perpetuate his name. ”

“ Every archer was furnished with a great stake tipped with iron; and his orders were, to thrust this stake into the ground, to discharge his arrow, and then to fall back, when the French horsemen came on. As the haughty French gentlemen, who were to break the English archers and utterly destroy them with their knightly lances, came riding up, they were received with such a blinding storm of arrows, that they broke and turned. ”

“ It is a very interesting sight to watch a contest of this kind. The eye can hardly follow, not only the arrows, but the rapid movements of the archer, as he draws the arrows and shoots them with all his might up into the blue sky above. Eight, ten, yes, sometimes even a dozen arrows are thus sent with wondrous rapidity, sometimes following so closely that it seems at times to the eye as though some succeeding would catch up to the ones just on ahead. The greater rapidity of the arrow just leaving the bow than that of those some hundreds of feet up adds to this delusion. ”

“ The day is past, and the moonbeams weep
O'er the many that rest in their last cold sleep;
Near to the gashed and the nerveless hand
Is the pointless spear and the broken brand;
The archer lies like an arrow spent,
His shafts all loose and his bow unbent;
Many a white plume torn and red,
Bright curls rent from the graceful head,
Helmet and breast-plate scattered around,
Lie a fearful show on the well-fought ground;
While the crow and the raven flock overhead
To feed on the hearts of the helpless dead,
Save when scared by the glaring eye
Of some wretch in his last death agony. ”

“ It is too much the custom to squeeze a quantity of arrows into a small quiver. Let not any archer who values his tackle be guilty of this folly. An arrow that has had one of its feathers crumpled from this cause will, maybe, wobble and stagger all the rest of its life, though in all other respects it be in perfect repair. ”

“ You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.Then said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving. ”

“ Cutting arrow feathers is a pleasant occupation around the fire in the winter evenings, and the real archer has the happiness of making his tackle while his mind dwells upon the coming spring shooting. As he makes his shaft he wonders what fate will befall it. Will it speed away in a futile shot, or last the grilling of a hundred practice flights, or will it be that fortunate arrow which flies swift and true and brings down the bounding deer? How often have I picked up a shaft and marked it, saying, "With this I'll kill a bear." ”

“ An archer, a hard man and very churlish, having great spite that a woman of whom he had heard so much talk should drive back so many valiant men as she had done, caught her from one side by her surcoat of cloth-of-gold, and dragged her from her horse to the ground: she could find neither rescue nor help from her followers that she might be remounted, notwithstanding the pains they took. ”

“ Butts for archery were established, and bows and arrows were to be let, at so many shots for a penny,—there being abundance of space for a farther flight-shot than any modern archer can lend to his shaft. ”

“ ARCHERY is the art, or exercise, of shooting with a bow and arrow.
Among ancient nations, the bow was the principal instrument of war; and the skill of the archer often decided the fate of battles and of empires. ”

“ Every archer is strongly advised, when he detects an error in the aim at the last moment that cannot be corrected before the discharge except in the action of the loose, to take down his arrow and begin the shooting of it afresh. ”

“ And after the arrow has left the bow, hold the pose! Carry through! Imagine yourself as a statue of an archer, and stay just in that position until you hear the arrow strike.
Just in the beginning, at forty yards, with thirty arrows, you may be satisfied if you hit the target between sixteen and twenty-one times out of the thirty shots and make a score of from sixty to eighty points. Your ambition will be, as in golf, to "break" a hundred. By the time you have done that your muscles will be in shape and you can begin on the American Round. ”

“ The vase painting depicted in Fig. 135 represents archery practice. The target here is the wooden figure of a cock set upon a column; of the three youths who are practising one shoots standing, the second kneeling, the common position for an archer, and the third is just about to draw his bow pressing his knee against it. All three use the second kind of bow. It is, of course, only an artistic licence that the archers are placed so near their goal; similarly the arrows are still flying while the two archers are about to shoot fresh ones. ”

“ For an hour we feasted sumptuously, and many a tale was told of archery and of the deer hunting of olden days, when, as I learned from the talk of my elders, men were taller and stronger and of keener eye than now, and such craft of the bow as Elbert and Old Marvin had that day displayed was the boast of many archers in any goodly company. ”

“ OF BRACING, OR STRINGING, AND NOCKING In the previous chapters such plain directions have been given concerning the various implements of archery as will enable each archer to provide himself with the best of the kind that his inclinations or means may lead him to adopt, and to enable him to avoid such as are in themselves radically bad, or likely to add to the difficulties he is sure to meet with before arriving at any great or satisfactory proficiency in the art. ”

“ As regards the footing or standing and the attitudes of archers, it may be safely asserted that there are as many varieties as there are archers to call them into existence; that no two are exactly alike in all particulars; and that no one archer has yet been seen to combine all the excellences that might be centred in a perfect archer.
That an archer's general position may be a good one it must possess three qualities—firmness, elasticity, and grace: firmness, to resist the strain and the recoil of the bow—for if there be any wavering or unsteadiness the shot will probably prove a failure ”

“ The attitude of an accomplished female archer (for archery is not to be acquired without much practice) at the moment of bending the bow is particularly graceful; all the actions and positions tend at once to produce a proper degree of strength in the limbs and to impart a general elegance of bearing. ”

“ He saw him come back in the shape of a crow, change himself into a roebuck, and again into a hare. As the hare was making its way through the forest the archer bent his bow, and discharged an arrow so well aimed that the hare at once fell dead to the ground. The archer came up to it, took the letter and the sword, and set out to the palace. When he arrived there he gave the king the sword, and demanded the promised reward.
The king was delighted to find himself in possession of the sword which would destroy all his enemies. ”

“ Unless the archer acquires a perfect understanding of the science of aiming, an almost impassable barrier is presented to his progressing a single step beyond the commonest mediocrity, whilst his interest in his practice is increased tenfold as soon as he has discovered that hitting or missing the object he aims at may be removed from the mysterious condition of an unaccountable sympathy between the hand and eye to the safer ground of positive knowledge. ”

“ In a roving party, arrows that reach within five bows’ length of the mark tell, and those which are nearest cut the others out. Each archer measures with his own bow. The number of the game is often nine, but generally twelve.
[132]
GENERAL HINTS FOR ARCHERS.
1. In commencing archery never begin with a stiff bow, but select one adapted to your strength, and change this for a stronger from time to time.
2. Never shoot with another person’s bow.
3. Never put an arrow in the string when any one stands between you and the target, or you may shoot out an eye. ”

“ Therefore it is strongly recommended to every archer to employ as long an arrow as he can conveniently use, and to bear in mind that the portion of it to be drawn up at each loose should bear some reasonable proportion to the length of arm, &c., in each individual case. It may be safely stated that no archer will find that he can conveniently draw fully up and loose evenly an arrow of greater length than the space between the left centre joint of the collarbone and the knuckle of the left-hand index-finger when the bow-arm is fully extended. ”

“ The trusty English archers, with the sun behind them, were not the men to be intimidated by leapings into the air, nor panic-struck by a discharge so ill-aimed that scarce one arrow in ten even grazed their armour. ”

“ In front of the knight lies his horse pierced with several arrows, and the dismounted rider is preparing to continue the combat on foot with his formidable axe. The archer is introduced from the same picture, to show the difference between his half armour and the complete panoply of the knight. In the archer’s equipment the body is protected by plates of steel and a skirt of mail, the upper arm by a half-sleeve of mail, and the head by a visored helmet; but the rest of the body is unarmed. ”

“ And now the archers shot, each man in turn, and the good folk never saw such archery as was done that day. Six arrows were within the clout, four within the black, and only two smote the outer ring; so that when the last arrow sped and struck the target, all the people shouted aloud, for it was noble shooting. ”

“ Yet still at any public archery meeting it is easy to observe, in one or other of the many varieties of style of drawing represented, the germs of all possible contortions; but in nearly all these cases of contortion it will be found that the 'very head and front of the offending' is in the archer's vain attempt to employ a bow that is beyond his control; whilst, if the weapon be well within his control, it is as needless to distort even a muscle of the face as it is for a short-sighted person to make a grimace when fixing the glass in his eye. ”

“ The beautiful princess looked at the archer. He captured her heart at once. She asked inquisitively how he had been able to get to her castle, which was on all sides surrounded by water and knew no human footsteps. Thereupon the archer replied that he knew secret spells by which he could transform himself into a deer, a hare, and a crow. The beautiful princess, therefore, requested the archer to [Pg 123] transform himself into a deer before her eyes. ”

“ Doubtless in the times when the English archer was in such high repute in battle, the only loose suitable to the old glove was the slash, as the only method of quitting the string, which, with the strongest bow each individual could use, must, for the longest pull on such bow, have been gripped as close as possible to the inside of the knuckles of the last joints of the two or three fingers used. ”

“ The archer who is really eager to hit the object on which he has spent his arrows, does not retire from the fight, but fetches more; and if he can find none, he fights with his bow, or falls on the enemy with stones, fists, and teeth. ”

“ Fond archer, Hope! who tak'st thy aim so far,
That still or short, or wide thine arrows are! ”

“ This figure is a perfect portrait of one of those bold and sturdy archers, the type of the ancient national character; a type which still exists in the plain, independent peasantry of the rural districts of the land. He is clad in the picturesque costume of the greenwood, with his sheaf of peacock arrows, bright and keen, stuck in his belt, and bearing in his hand “a mighty bowe”—the far-famed “long-bow” of the English archers—the most formidable weapon of the Middle Ages, which twanged such fatal music to the chivalry of France at Poictiers and Agincourt. ”

“ ARCHERY, the art and practice of shooting with the bow (arcus) and arrow, or with crossbow and bolts. Though these weapons are by no means widely used amongst savage tribes of the present day, their origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. Amongst the great peoples of ancient history the Egyptians were History
in war. the first and the most famous of archers, relying on the bow as their principal weapon in war. Their bows were somewhat shorter than a man, and their arrows varied between 2 ft. and 2 ft. ”

“ The pile of the arrow should not be drawn on to the bow. It is far better that no arrow be drawn further than exactly to the pile; and every arrow should be longer, by at least as much as the pile, than the archer's actual draw. The danger of overdrawing, in that the arrow at the loose gets set inside the bow, to its own certain destruction and to the bow's and the archer's infinite risk, is very considerable. ”

“ In order to test its strength or stiffness the arrow must be held by the nock, with its pile placed on some solid substance. The hand at liberty should now be pressed downwards on the middle of the arrow. A very little experience as to whether the arrow offer efficient resistance to this pressure will suffice to satisfy the archer about its stiffness. An arrow that is weaker on one side than on the other should also be rejected. ”