risinglong
New member
It's important to remember that Roger Ascham was of a different educational and social background and also era.Del
I found this part of Toxophilus interesting when I first read it, it echoes what you have posted about bows being made slightly heavier than need be and then maybe fiddled with to suit the archer?
Were the longbows on the Mary Rose all piked and whip tillered? did any of them have flat bellies? Did they need tweeking?
"Roger Ascham (c. 1515 - 23 December 1568) was an English scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education. He acted as Princess Elizabeth's tutor in Greek and Latin between 1548-50, and served in the administrations of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. "
"Ascham was educated not at school, but in the house of Sir Humphry Wingfield, a barrister, and in 1533 Speaker of the House of Commons, as Ascham himself tells us, in the Toxophilus where they were under a tutor named R. Bond. Their sport was archery, and Sir Humphry "himself would at term times bring down from London both bows and shafts and go with them himself to see them shoot"."
I fancy trying the three step method:scratchch
Remember there is no 3 step, 2 step or 1 step method as such , just me trying to make head or tail of a 500 year old treatise. :hypnotize
Yeah, and the anchor point is something that a target or longbow archer consciously changes from the victorian style of shooting but there are other inherited things. For example, standing bolt upright, imparts no power to the shot but I magine because for the victorian ladies in corsets and (and some of the portly men too no doubt) little else was possible it's become archery common sense. Doesn't it feel awfully naughty to hucker down before the draw ? :burp:I think you're right about our heritage of target archery, some of the people I shoot with in my club have spent a fair amount of time to try to get me to draw under my chin instead of to my ear.
I don't shoot a recurve with a sight, so I ignore them and draw to the ear and look down the shaft to aim.
So as YewSelfbow says 'form follows function' but part of that function is cultural and social because that is the nature of humans. A Victorian gentlemen wouldn't be seen dead hunched over the bow as if he were a pickpocket, the form of shooting was an expression of his character.
Anyway back to the 14th century :yummy: