Re: Bow

[Jonathan Davies]

Ye there are illustrations of bows which are unstrung or apparently with the
string not fully strung and I don't claim to have seen all of the
illustrations that there are,who has?     Purely on a practical level you
would be extremely foolish to risk damaging your bow by leaving it uncovered
when not in use.  If I do that should I assume that my illustrious brethren
cared for ther bows less?  If they did not protect their bows then why not?
Cheers
Jonathan

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 12:21 AM, Brent E Hanner
wrote:

> Jonathan Davies wrote:
> >
> > Dear All,
> > I have been going through all the contemporary illustrations of medieval
> > archers and failing to find any evidence of bow bags.  I suppose there
> are
> > several obvious reasons for this:
> >    - They didn't have them
> >    -  All the illustrations seem to show archers with strung bows in
> which
> >    case they would have discarded them
>
> Well you obviously haven't gone through all of them or you would have
> found some that don't show them strung.  And that doesn't include the
> images where it is unclear
>
>
> http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=37258
> and
> http://www.mediumaevum.com/COSG/Mamerot.jpg plus several others in this
> manuscript, interestingly enough also has one with them strung but
> doesn't appear to be in combat.
>
> This sort of thing comes down to Ockham's Razor.  Do you go with what
> you know the evidence can support or do you make a assumption that
> something must have existed because you believe it must have.  If you
> stick to what evidence can support then you can always plead ignorance,
> but if you assume something must exist even if you don't have any
> evidence for it then you don't have any ground to stand on when evidence
> in support of something else exists.  In a decade of doing this I have
> never seen anything that must have existed for which there is no
> evidence for.
>
> Brent
>
>
> --
> To peel it down to the core / Of what I surely must have meant.  That is
> what scholarship is for:  To misread, deconstruct, invent, to prove the
> author asinine; Dwell on a phrase you can augment / And ignore the
> opposite line, Until your theory fits fine, Interpreting and making
> sense / At your pleasure, excluding mine.
> -Francois Villon
>
>