OT Humour. Never trust an old lady.

True story.

I was once stopped on the M4. It was a fair cop, guv, I was doing ninety odd. As I was on my way back from a school visit, I had four broadswords, a spear, an axe and several other edged weapons in the car along with mail shirts, pots, boxes, looms, fire making kit, helmets etc.

I got out, locked the car, looked him in the eye, dropped the keys on the roof & said "Officer, I must tell you the car is full of weapons".

He looked at me rather straight, then looked into the Volvo estate & saw the swords.

"What in God's name ....?" In words short and swift I explained I was a professional Viking that did school visits, I opened the car & handed him a mail shirt which he held against himself & grinned. He then took a sword out & looked at it - then looked up at me, grin fading & said the immortal words

"Bugger. I've lost the moral high ground now, haven't I? Go on, sod off & SLOW DOWN!!"

Pax

Kim Siddorn

Non magister mundi sum

Hi Kim, you just had to prove the new latin site didn't know everything! We already new you were not the the master of this universe! Just the one where you get dressed in funny clothes & wave big swords at each other. Góða nótt. 8^)

-- Dave Croft Warrington England

Where King Harold gets one in the eye on the Bayeux Tapestry, there are the words "Harold Rex interfectus est" - "here King Harold is killed." For anyone who may wish to share a sleeve of my anorak -

Pax

Kim Siddorn

Non magister mundi sum

but I was under the impression that the Bayeux tapestry was greatly "restored" in Victorian times and much is now of questionable accuracy, or is that another urban myth?? ttfn Roland

Dusts off soap box, steps up, shoves thumbs into braces.

It is true that the BT was restored on various occasions and some doubt was originally cast upon the provenance of the "arrow in the eye", a story attributed to the chronicler Wace & first appearing in written form about

Research carried out in the late 1980's indicates that the stitch hole evidence precedes the repair and current thinking is that the arrow is correctly interpreted even though the form is not original.

And rest..........

Pax

Kim Siddorn

Non magister mundi sum

Thanks. Consider me enlightened. Pray tell what form did the Norman bow take and why it is that the Mongol recurve never made it here? Was it perhaps that we lacked the necessary horsemanship skills to make it worthwhile?? ttfn Roland

The bow has been in use for some 30-40,000 years. Every possible variation had been tried in that time as one might imagine & the bow we call the Longbow (taller than the user, D section & made from available timber but ash &/or yew preferred) was certainly in use in Europe & Britain.

The illustrations of archers with apparently short bows in the BT is probably an attempt at showing that, in the press of battle, the archers were using their bows almost flat, thus giving a truncated appearance to their weapons.

The use of the recurve bow was known in Northern Europe, but no attempts to use or recreate a composite bow of wood and horn held together with hoof-and-horn glue & utilising other rather water-soluble products in its manufacture have been discovered in the archaeological record.

FWIW, I think the double recurve bows you have in mind would simply have dropped to bits in this climate - it's pretty dry on the steppe!

Regia occasionally demonstrates a Saracen horse archer in post Crusade shows. He has a double recurve bow.

regards

Kim Siddorn

- who was once a GNAS archery instructor & Master Bowman in Longbow ;o))

In message , Kim Siddorn writes

I read somewhere that his last words were:

"Watch yon bugger - he'll have someone's eye out"

Regards,

"Roland Craven" wrote (snip):-

Ah, Sketchley gold service ;-)

It did, but they couldn't be made here and they didn't survive here. You need bigger buffalo to make them out of than anything we had to use and they're also a tricky materials problem for glues.