You may all find this site interesting...it's the source of John T's post. As he rightly says, there's nothing new under the sun. I think however, this article was probably intended as an instruction for flight/leisure shooting.
http://www.archerylibrary.com/books/gallice/docs/chapter09-1.html
You're probably right Frank......I've always thought though, that a lot of this information has probably been plagiarised from the earlier work referred to as "The Art of War" (Clearly nothing to do with Sun Tzu!), that I
assume, had a
distinctly more martial flavour, rather than being a leisure and flight instruction manual.
This work "Art De L'Archerie" was written in old French, published in Paris in 1515, possibly penned by our former allies the Gascons and makes reference to "wearing a sword on your left side", clearly not an accoutrement for the sporting archer and also mentions in several places "amongst the English" this and "amongst the English" that and also gives reference to fletching suitable for war arrows (as well as target/butt shooting arrows).....so my thinking is that this book was possibly a follow-on from an earlier English work, re-written and revised to transfer what knowledge the French has gleaned from witnessing and possibly fighting alongside the English during the HYW.
Of course all this is just my personal opinion, but as we have no earlier written references from this period and the available 2-D drawn/painted representations of medieval archery can be misleading at best, I take this as the best information currently available on the archery of the 15th century.
Hope everyone enjoys the read and (much to Del the Cat's disgust
) are now busy experimenting with hopping and skipping about on the shooting line trying to add a few yards to their distance shooting! LoL
All the best,
John T.
