366 HINTS TO ARCHEIIS 



under Julias Caesar. The weapon was never much in esteem among 

 the Legions, though after reading the commentaries of the Roman 

 hero, I cannot help suspecting that the " immortal Caesar" was himself 

 no stranger to its practice. The English, however, in the earlier 

 times, did no credit to their Cretan masters. We find at the battle 

 of Hastings, that the Norman bowmen threw them completely into 

 the shade ; for the historians inform us that the flights of the Norman 

 arrows were " so thick as to obscure the light of the sun." No 

 wonder then, that the gallant British king fell a victim, when such 

 ungenerous, I may say, such unsoldierlike advantages were taken, to 

 slay him in the dark. 



Almost every great man of antiquity was an archer, from Homer 

 'downwards ; but it seems the Scythians were the most expert of any 

 as a nation. In fact, according to the best authorities, the term 

 ARCHER is derived from the name of this people, which is in its turn 

 supposed to be deduced from the Teutonic word schleten, or scheten, 

 or schuten, or shuten, signifying great shooters ; so that the word 

 Scythia, by the most natural transposition possible, is clearly nothing 

 more than shooter or archer.* It was from the Scythians that the 

 Greeks became acquainted with the weapon, and here we have some 

 record of its value by that glorious old archer, Homer. We read of 

 his heroes Teucer and Pandarus ; what prodigious shots they must 

 have been ! and what weapons they had. He tells us, that the bow 

 of Pandarus was formed from the single horn of a mountain goat, 

 killed by his own hand. This horn was sixteen palms in length ! 

 We have no such goats now-a-days. There can be little doubt that 

 the poet was a practical man, or he never could have described such 

 a weapon and its uses so truly. 



Although the Romans, as a people, were not celebrated for ex- 

 cellence in the art, yet Suetonius and others give some wonderful ac- 

 counts of the prowess of many of the Emperors. Commodus was an 

 absolute marvel ; Herodian says, he would kill a hundred lions in the 

 amphitheatre with a hundred arrows, and never miss, or merely 

 wound, in a single instance. That was not all ; he would cause 

 arrows to be made with sharp circular heads, and when the ostrich 

 was urged to full speed, he would remove its head so dexterously, 

 that the unconscious bird would continue running as though nothing 

 had happened ! The emperor must have been a devil of a shot, and 

 so was Herodian. 



But these were isolated cases. It was reserved for Britons to carry 

 the palm of archery against the world. In Scotland the bow was 

 practised as early as in the south, if we may believe one Macpherson 

 a poet of a very remote age, and the author of Ossian. " Sons of 

 Leith," says Macpherson, " bring the bows of our fathers ! the sound- 

 ing quivers of Morni !" And in Wales there were archers of won- 

 derful skill. Giraldus Cambriensis relates, that, during a siege in that 

 country, two soldiers in haste to regain their tower, were annoyed 

 by the arrows of the Welsh. They succeeded in closing the portal ; 

 but were killed notwithstanding ; for the arrows went clean through 

 the defence, which was of hardened oak, closely studded, and four 



* See Encyclopaedia Londinensis. 



