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Notes Section II
1. See "Yew-trees and Yew-bows" in another part of this work.
2. Bows are broken through the string giving way more than by any other accident, except over-drawing.
3. Battle of Agincourt, 1625.
4. See "Female Archery."
5. See "Welsh Archery".
6. Usually distinguished by being grey or black, when the others are white, and vice versâ
7. Equally heavy or light
8. Vol. i. p. 183
9. The practised eye will foretel an arrow's fate long before it arrives at the mark.
10. See De Rous's MS.
11. All nations appear to have held the shaft hand in some respect. Thus' in the middle ages, a severe punishment awaited youth or man who designedly injured either of the three first fingers of his right hand. Dr. Southey says, that one tribe of cannibal Indians superstitiously abstained from eating the thumb, even of prisoners taken in war, because of its use in their method of drawing the bow; and when a certain horde of Tartars celebrate the funeral of their khan, each person of distinction present, shoots an arrow into the right hand of the royal corpse. See Dr. Southey's Brazil. -- Lind. Gloss. art. Digitus.
12. Unpublished MS., Sloane Collection, No. 444.
13. Psalters of Tara.
14. The Kentish Bowmen rendered themselves highly popular by the alacrity with which, when the French threatened to invade us, they abandoned their sportive pursuits, and fled to the arms of the day, in order to battle "pro aris et focis." Many spirited jeux d'esprits, complimentary to the loyalty of its members, of both sexes, were circulated at the period, tent now lie hidden in the portfolios of the curious, or have perished with the fraternity and the occasion. In one of them, the "Thunderer," of Olympus suggests to its assembled deities the peculiar favours each should bestow upon England's patriotic bowmen. The ladies are unanimously consigned to the tutorage of the little archer god:--

"His bow shall he bend, and a lesson impart,
Expertly to shoot at their target, the heart."

The poet then alludes to the British nation in general:--

"Then bestow'd each celestial some habits of worth,
And mercy descended triumphant to earth.
New Henries and Edwards did swarm on the plain,
And Cressys and Agincourts conquered again;
And many a fair, darting love from her eyes,
As Captain of NUMBERS!* soon bore off the prize
Favour'd thus by the gods, by the king, by the fair,
May ye Britons have peace.
Yet should trumpets speak war,
Of a nation insulted, beware--the bow's bent--
Then make from the shafts of the Bowmen of Kent."

Some of the prizes offered by the Royal Kentish Bowmen were truly magnificent. In August, 1802, they assembled on Dartford Heath, to shoot for an elegant Indian bow, quiver, and twelve arrows, valued at fifty guineas. Distance 100 yards. It was won by George Maddock, Esq., who pierced the gold centre
* In its ordinary signification, captain of numbers means the archer who scores highest, according to the value of the target rings; but an equivoque is here intended.
15. This, of course, applies to visiters.
16. From MS.
17.
Anniversary of 1793.
Silver arrow.--Rev. Edmund Wilmot.
Of 1734.
Silver arrow.--C. Hope, Esq.
Bow and arrow.--Rev. J. Clarke.
18. Before you are aware of him.
19. "That fellow bandies his bow like a crow-keeper," says Lear, i. e. cowereth down, that the birds may not see him. Perhaps Shakspeare had read the Toxophilus; perhaps his own perfect acquaintance with the bow suggested the comparison. The allusion, however, was not an uncommon one with poets of that day.

Cupid I hate thee, which I'd have thee know;
    A naked starv'ling ever may'st thou be.
Poor rogue, go pawn thy fascia and thy bow
    For some few rags wherewith to cover thee
Or, if thou 'lt not thy archery forbear,
    To some base rustic do thyself prefer,
And when corn's sown and grown into the ear,
    Practise thy quiver, and turn crow keeper.
John Heywood.
20. See ancient illustrated MS. edition of Froissart in the British Museum. 3
21. History of Brazil.
22. Roberts
23. See plate.
24. From an old account book once belonging to Sir John Franklyn, Knt. of Wellesden, Middlesex.
25. Of silk.   "Their strings of silk full sure."
Ballad of Robin Hood.
26. Vie de Behader Khan.
27. A.D. 1673.
28. Of Bristol, a genuine admirer of our old English literature. His edition of "Gul Decker's Horn Book," quoted above, besides containing much antiquarian lore, is a fine specimen of provincial typography.
29. Some time in the early port of his reign, Charles the First granted permission to one Benjamin Andrews to set up public marks, alla demand a penny for eight shots, from every archer willing to pay for the same. The patent to continue in force during the space of fourteen years.--Patents of King Charles I.

It is a curious, but hitherto unnoticed, fact, that, before the Reformation our Roman Catholic parish priesthood sometimes raised a trifling fund for pious uses, by the loan of bows and arrows to those who could not afford to purchase them. Thus, in an old churchwarden's account of the time of Henry the Seventh, found in the muniment chest of Shure Church, Surrey, a schedule of the parish property mentions "two bowes, one in the keepynge of Robert Wornham, the other of Thomas Astone, under surety of John Astone, smythe and archere These were to maintain a lampe before the rode."
30. Carlyle's Charity Commissions, 234, 235.
31. This arrow scale applies equally to all other archery games.
32. See plates at the end of this volume.
33. Heywood's Life of Ambrosias Merlin, edit. 1609.
34. The breadth of the belt or band, not the diameter of the whole circle formed by it.
35. The target, properly so called, is bounded by the exterior circle; all beyond counting as nothing.
36. The horn-spoon is used at the meetings of the Woodmen of Arden.
37. Du Halde
38. These exercises consist in shooting dismounted, and also riding at full gallop, against a very large target. Such as acquit themselves with éclat are elected doctors, or licentiates, in archery.--Art. Mil. Chinois.
39. The Chinese divide the night into four portions, by vielles, which they sound upon the tambour. The first is at midnight, the last at daybreak.
40. L'Art Militaire Chinois.
41. Turkish name for Constantinople.
42. Evliya Effendi.
43. Translated from Vertomannus's Travels in the East.
44. Relation d'un voyage en Perse, 1590, per un gentilhomme de la suite du Seigneur Scierley, ambassadeur du roy d'Angleterre.
45. See Female Archery.
46. The Persians, in general, have a very noble physiognomy.
47. A town in Persia, celebrated for its manufactory of gilded and painted bows and arrows.
48. Their mode of training for this Parthian manoeuvre has been well described by Busbequius, an eye-witness, They erect a high pole in the centre of a plain, having a brass ball fixed on its top. Around this they spur vigorously, until a little beyond it, the horse still galloping, when suddenly they turn in their splendid morocco saddles, and drive an arrow into the globe as they fly. The constant practice of this manoeuvre renders them so expert, that the bow being turned in the sight of the unwary pursuer, be is instantly shot through and through.
49. See Female Archery, p. 111.