Remember I mentioned 'The King's Warren' - a grove of yew trees (near The Silent Pool) from which staves were cut to make the bows used at the battle of Agincourt? Well this is one of them.
When I was a student, I found a reference to The King's Warren and somehow worked out where it should be if there were any trees left, then I set out with a friend (Cro's Simon) on his motorcycle to find it.
We parked up at the famous roadside cafe and clambered down the steep hill, finding the ancient yews quite easily. I think we were toying with the idea of making a couple of longbows from them, but never got around to doing it, for reasons explained below.
Years later I tried archery as a beginner in a local club, but never got any further than using a nasty practice bow. These bows are made of tensile plastic and if you have arms as long as mine, they require the same sort of pulling weight as an old longbow. They were supposed to be about 30 pounds pull, but with a wingspan of six feet six inches (which I had at the time before arthritis set in) the pull was more like 60 pounds. The standard draw weight of the Agincourt bows was around 150 pounds - so heavy that it changed the bone structure of the archers, who were trained from childhood.
I also needed 36 inch arrows to prevent 'overdraw' and the consequential hazard of skewering my own hand with a short arrow. These would have had to be made for me, and I never got around to that either.
Youthful yews tend to grow in handy clumps of almost ready-made staves, but as the years go by, they meld together to form a single trunk. That yew is probably about a thousand years old. It has been a few years since it was pollarded.
Their use in churchyards, rather than being for bows, was to ensure the immortality of the soul. It probably worked too, unless you got an arrow through your chest.
ReplyDeleteI think they - being evergreens - symbolised the meeting of the underworld and this one. Very pagan.
DeleteI read somewhere that the oldest forests left in Europe were in Estonia, but this little woods must be older than any of Estonia's oaks.
ReplyDeleteWhen you found the yews, did you hug them? Because there's something powerful about wrapping your arms around a living thing that is a thousand years old.
I don't hug trees. My arms aren't long enough, despite what I say in the post.
DeleteYour heading The Archers sent me hurtling downwards thinking I was going to be reading a dire post. But it wasn't to be and I was saved. Did you do that as a red herring?
ReplyDeleteWe used to make bows and arrows at home and we always used ash. In fact yew doesn't look obviously like a wood for bows to me although I am not familiar with ever working with it at all so I wouldn't really know.
Yes, I thought that the title would get people steaming up with boredom. I think I am right in saying that the arrows are usually ash, not the bows.
DeleteI use ash for tool handles. Straight grained with a spring in its step/flight.
DeleteThere is a thing called 'the archer's paradox'. The front of the arrow moves slightly less fast than the back when it is loosed, leading to a flex in the whole length which continues until it hits its mark. It snakes through the air in a straight line.
I listened to an old Osage Indian chief talk about his uncles bow and arrow skills. He said they could gauge the wind and shoot over the barn into a barrel on the other side. When I shoot an arrow, it drops to the ground in front of me. I have many arrow heads the indians made with churt.
ReplyDeleteChurt is good for arrows. There is a village near Newlands Corner called Churt, and it is known for the stuff. Flint is good for black powder guns. - the next generation.
DeleteWell, all churt is is flint with flexible impurities. More resilient, less brittle, but still silica.
DeleteI didn't know that about court, but some of the arrowheads are razor sharp. I even have some tiny ones about the size of a small fingernail. I guess they might have been used for small birds so as to not cause too much damage.
DeleteLike Rachel I thought 'oh no. Not a post about the Archers. Pretty sure you did that title on purpose.
ReplyDeleteYep.
DeleteRachel, Tom, Cro and Weave... why heart sinking? Of all the people in all of the world, I had got you four down as Archers fans, am I wrong?
ReplyDeleteLX
Tom is, we aren't. Weave and my comments will not be lost on Tom.
DeleteOoh err... the plot thickens? As it should in any self respecting soap.
DeleteLX
I have been known to miss meals, dates and even flights to catch up on The Archers. These days it is not so urgent. Playback is 24/7.
DeleteSimply fascinating. Trees are lovely creatures in and of themselves. Yes, I'm a tree hugger, and they probably pass about rude remarks of me. I visited the redwoods in California once, just to see old trees. So, I wondered where are the oldest trees, and turning to my impeccable Wikipedia, the three oldest are the US. The oldest is a five thousand year old bristlecone pine!
ReplyDeleteThen a tree in Chile, then the US, then SriLanka. But just think about all they've seen. We are nothing, including trump.
The word 'Chump' refers to a short log, but maybe I am mansplaining.
DeleteTrickery, I say...🤣😉 Tom it took me up till today to read this post just because of the title. Gabs
ReplyDelete