Six shooting archery in Robin Hood – Men in Tights

Since today is the leap day, and it's only in every four years (except in years that are divisible by 100, but not by 400, in Gregorian calendar that is) you get a special extra post: Cary Elwes! Of course from the hilarious comedy film Robin Hood – Men in Tights (1993). Real Robin Hood, if he would've existed (which he most probably didn't) would not have worn tights, or known about the leap day for that matter, since they used a Julian calendar at that time. All of this is irrelevant to archery though.

So this time I want to talk about how Cary Elwes, I mean Robin Hood, shoots six arrows at once. It is most probably a reference to western movies with their six-shooting revolvers. Of course you cannot do this with a bow. The second picture shows Hood placing the arrows carefully on top of each other to the bowstring. But there's nothing to keep them there, all aligned beautifully. They used some kind of movie trickery to make that happen (secret arrow holder or glue perhaps?), but in reality this would not work. If shot like this, some of the arrows would surely fly out of the bow. Possibly poorly, hindered by the collapsing arrow pile. Many arrows would just land a few meters ahead or just straight frop off the bowstring and fall to the ground immediately. It would be completely impossible to aim all these arrows.

And what would be the point of it? If an arrow can kill a man, does it need six arrows to kill him six-times more dead? This is precisely the point why the Greeks didn't employ in great numbers the repeating catapult they invented (yes catapult is an arrow thrower, and not a stone thrower, like the ballista), it was too accurate! The same happened with the invent of the modern machine guns. All the arrows and bullets flew to the same spot, which is counter-intuitive after the target is already dead. With machine guns they made the bullets sparse out in flight so they would cover a larger area. With the repeating catapult they couldn't fix that problem, so it wasn't much used in warfare. There is no point of shooting several arrows at once, since they will hit the same target, which is not needed. It is a waste of arrows. Much more useful would be to shoot the arrows one after another to different targets. Now he would have potentially killed six enemies instead of hitting one target six times.

The film is great though, you should watch it if you haven't seen it already. And watch again if you haven't seen it in recent years.

Another one of those elvesses

Why is it that all elves are female? I know why, it's because men (and boys [and men-children]) draw these pictures with one hand in their pocket. That pocket that has a hole in the bottom you know. But seriously think about how an elven population could sustain itself if it's only made of up women? Are elves a kind of fantasy race such as Amazons who only go to men when they want to reproduce, kill all their boy children and live in solitude? Or is it that gender roles are reversed in elven societies, so that elven women do all the fighting stuff (you know, archery is fighting when done against people and not animals, in which case it is hunting), and elf-men are take care of the home and children?

These scenarios seem unlikely at best. But according to contemporary pictorial evidence, all elves seem to be women.
Except Cary Elwes of course!


Back to business. That Elder Scrolls inspired (quod green glass sword) elvess (?, female elf) has many mistakes in her archery style, so probably she's just a poser with a bow, but without any knowledge of how to shoot with it.

1. Let's start with the bow as always. It's hoorrible, also as always. Sad. This bulky spiky thing would not actually work as a bow, so maybe she should just throw it at enemies instead of trying to shoot with it.

2. The string is not attached to the end of the bow limbs, as it should. The fistmele is also too great.

3. This is a reverse grip of the arrow. There is no point of doing this, and to my knowledge, no evidence of anyone ever doing it.

4. This is the place where the arrow should be nocked. About the center of the bowstring (technically usually one fist above the center, depending on bow type though), but this arrow is nowhere near the center. This arrow would hit the ground if shooting it is possible at all.

5. Back quiver. And on the wrong shoulder for a right handed person. Impossible to get the arrows from there.

6. The arrow has a huge arrowtip, which would be too heavy for an actualy arrow that is intended to be shot from a bow.

Boobs and butt pose number million

This obviously World of Warcraft inspired (night) elf is as usual: A) female, B) scantily clad, C) has a horrible bow, D) doesn't know how to shoot. On to the mistakes:

1. This thing is what the maker of this image probably thought of as a bow. A quick look at a real bow however would've been immensely helpful in rendering the bow realistically. This "bow" is unbeliavable, and not in a good sense of the word. How does she even get her hand in the middle of the spiky thing to find the handle of the bow? Her hand must be ful of scars.

2. This bow doesn't bend. So it doesn't work. So it's not a real bow. But that we knew already.

3. The posture is very bad. The elbow should be drawn back.

4. There are no other arrows anywhere to be seen, nor an empty quiver. What she's going to shoot after this only arrow?

Bonus: the bowstring is coming apart soon.

Archery in Thorgal comics

Thorgal is a fantasy comic album series by a Belgian writer Jean Van Hamme, and Polish artist Grzegorz Rosinski, one of the most famous European comic series of all time (says the backcover text). It tells the adventurous life story of orphan Conanesque (he even have long black hair) viking warrior called Thorgal, who fights tirelessly for freedom and justice, as we modern people experience and imagine those virtues, and not like ancient or medieval people. Unusual of other cliché barbarian characters Thorgal doesn't use a sword or a huge axe as his main weapon, instead he is a master of the bow. Exciting! Let's see.

I only had the third album (out of over thirty!), which I accidentally bumped into in a library of Oodi (which' opening in Helsinki last year had more people than books in it, which is very wrong for a library!). So all these pictures are from the third album (or second in English album series?) in the Thorgal series, called The Three Elders of Aran (Aranin maan kolme vanhusta in Finnish, Les Trois vieillards du pays d'Aran in original French). The texts are in Finnish.

Now to the archery mistakes:

1. This arrow taken straight out of Thorgals quiver is way too short. It's a pet peeve of artists (mine included) to draw arrows too short when they are not being shot. It is hard to understand that the length of the arrow is really significant, longer than it's shooters outstretched arm. The arrowtip is also too big.

2. Thorgal carries his bow strung and tucked around his body. This is not a good way to carry a bow. First of all it's a nuisance, a powerful warbow or hunting bow will hurt your chest if it's carried like that, since the fistmele of the bow (distance between the handle of the bow and the string) is most probably shorter than the thickness of the archers chest. Thus the bowstring presses against the chest all the time. This might not be a problem if the bow is carried like this for a short period of time, but this is how Thorgal is shown carrying his bow all the time. The other reason is that keeping the bow constantly strung (string attached to the bow arc) it slowly but gradually loses it's power when the wood curves into the shape it's being held. This again is not a problem if done occasionally for short time, but always carrying a bow like that is not good.
I have not seen any historical illustrations of archers carrying their bows like this. Usually bows are carried in bow quivers on the hip, rarely on the back, sometimes bows are shown being carried on the shoulder, but not like this around the upper body. But this is like many fantasy characters, most famously Legolas, carry their bows around.

3. Thorgal carries his arrows on a staple fantasy back quiver, which is not very useful, furthermore because the quiver opens on the left shoulder and him being right handed the arrows should be on the right shoulder.

This picture is here to show that the baddies broke Thorgals bow (and sword) in half. This bow is unrepearable now. Easier would've been just the cut the bowstring, which usually was done to render a bow incapable of shooting (although an archer might have a spare bowstring or two somewhere on him, most usually inside his hat to keep it dry, but then again Thorgal doesn't have a hat, or a bag or any other means of transporting goods on him either...). The bowstring was spared here because it's easier to depict repaired bowstave than a repaired bowstring in a comic book.

4. In the next scene Thorgal has repaired his broken bow by threading the halves together. I doubt this would work very well at all. Maybe he's able to shoot something with it, but not very far, and it might brake in two quite easily again. Furthermore this repair shortens the bow about 30-40 cm estimating from the pictures. This makes using the same bowstring impossible, because it's way too long. They thought readers wouldn't notice such a thing, even if they noticed it themselves.

Now he uses the classic fantasy rope arrow trick to hook a grappling iron over the crenellation of the keep. Maybe it could theoretically work, I don't know, but seems quite fanciful. Certainly there is no historical precedence of doing something like that. Grappling hooks were in fact shot from catapults in antiquity (to grapple other ships in naval battles), not with bows (yes I know he first shoots a string, and then uses that to pull the hook there, but it seems like this trick has too many parts that could go wrong).

This is one of Thorgals rivals in a competition over the princess (who's already his bride). The ugly ranger dressed in fantasy studded leather armour (which never existed in real life) he shoots a longbow from a horseback. Longbows were not regularly used on horseback because they're too long for effectively being shot from there. the bows lower limb will interfere with the horses body too much. That's why horse archers tended to use very short (recurve) bows, or then make their bows asymmetrical, the lower limb being shorter than the upper (like Japanese yumi).
Here the character has turned his bow in a 45 degree angle in order to be able to shoot without having the horses neck interfering with the bow, which is exactly the thing you would do if you would have to shoot too long a bow on horseback. No mistake here. He also has his arrows on a hip quiver, like one should do.

5. What is this? This is completely ridiculous! That ranger character holds the bow with one hand (being the other hand he shot with the last time), and holds the arrow only between his bowhand fingers! This would not work with a real powerful bow. Nobody is strong enough to hold the bow strung like that with only one hand. The bow should be a children's toy in order for that to happen. Also the aim is ruined, it's just not possible to shoot with one hand only. It's quite a stupid trick, doesn't even look cool. I have never seen this mistake before, so I don't even have a name for it, and I doubt (and really hope) I don't ever see it again, so there's no point of creating a category for it.