By ROBERT MACGREGOR.
Though it has often been hastily assumed that the annals of the bow
in the northern kingdom would require no more space in the writing
than did Olaus Magnus’s famous chapter on the snakes of Iceland, yet
this is only true of archery in battle; and it is a curious fact
that, though the Scots could never be induced to take to the bow as a
military weapon, they became very fond of archery as a pastime, when
firearms took the place of bows and arrows as “artilyere,” and there
was no further need of statutes forcing the bow into their hands, and
forbidding all outdoor amusements that interfered with its practice. It
is a curious problem why, in two races so akin as the English and the
Lowland Scots, national bent should in this respect take such opposite
directions. While the southern yeoman delighted in his long-bow and the
sheaf of shafts—“the twelve Scots’ lives” he bore under his girdle—his
kinsman foe across the Tweed could never be compelled either by
experience or a long series of penal statutes to take to the weapon
whose power in skilful hands he had felt on many a bloody field. “Few
of thaim was sekyr of archarie,” laments Blind Harry, the minstrel,
of Wallace’s followers; and not only was this true of all succeeding
Scottish soldiers, but it may be that the same national prejudice can
be traced back for centuries before the Blind Minstrel’s time, to the
days of the sculptured stones that stud the northeastern districts of
Scotland. While on them are many delineations of the hunter aiming his
arrow at deer or wild boar, there is only one instance, in all their
many scenes of war, in which fighting men are armed with the bow.
When the first James of Scotland returned to his northern kingdom with
his “fairest English flower,” Lady Jane Beaufort, he brought back
with him from his long captivity a deep impression of the value of
the bow. Under the careful instruction of the constable of Pevensey,
James had become a fine marksman, and he tried by every means in his
power to popularize the exercise at home. He forbade football and other
“unprofitable sports;” he ordered every man to shoot at the bow marks
near his parish church every Sunday; he chose a bodyguard for himself
from among the most skilful archers at the periodical “Wappinshaws;”
and in his poem of “Christ’s Kirk on the Green” he published a scathing
satire on the clumsiness and inefficiency of his peasantry in archery.
What the most energetic of the Stuart kings set his mind to he
generally succeeded in; and possibly, if the dagger of “that mischant
traitor, Robert Grahame,” had spared his life at Perth, James might
have done what so many Scottish kings failed to do; as it was, we see
signs of improvement among his people.
The bodyguard that the author of the “King’s Quhair” embodied for
himself was the origin of the famous “Royal Company of Archers” that
still flourishes vigorously in Edinburgh. So say the present “Bodyguard
for Scotland,” though their oldest extant records stop short two
centuries and a half of King James’s time.
With James’s assassination at Perth, the new-born zeal for archery
seems to have died away; and it is not till we come to the time of
James V. that any noteworthy traces of its practice can be found. If
we may judge from a story told in Lindsay of Pitscottie’s quaint old
chronicle of Scotland, the Commons’ king had some fine archers in his
kingdom; for Lindsay tells us how the Scottish marksmen were victorious
in what must surely have been the earliest friendly shooting-match
between England and Scotland. The occasion of this international match
was Henry VIII. sending an embassy with the garter to his nephew, the
young King of Scots, in 1534. “In this year,” says Pitscottie, whose
spelling we modernize, “came an English ambassador out of England,
called Lord William Howard: a bishop and other gentlemen, to the number
of three score horse: who were all able wailled [picked] gentlemen for
all kinds of pastimes, as shooting, leaping, wrestling, running, and
casting of the stone. But they were well essayed in all these before
they went home, and that by their own provocation, and they almost
ever tint [lost]: while at the last the king’s mother favored the
Englishmen, because she was the king of England’s sister; and therefore
she took a wager of archery upon the Englishmen’s hands, contrary
to the king her son, and any half dozen Scotsmen, either noblemen,
gentlemen, or yeomen, that so many Englishmen should shoot against
them at ‘rovers,’ ‘butts,’ or ‘prick-bonnet.’ The king hearing of this
bonspiel [sporting match] of his mother was well content. So there was
laid a hundred crowns, and a tun of wine pandit [staked] on each side.
The ground was chosen in St. Andrews. The Scottish archers were three
landed gentlemen and three yeomen, to wit: David Wemyss of that ilk,
David Arnott of that ilk, and Mr. John Wedderburn, vicar of Dundee.
The yeomen were John Thomson in Leith, Steven Tabroner, and Alexander
Baillie, who was a piper. [The Scottish archers] shot wondrous near,
and won the wager from the Englishmen; and thereafter went into the
town, and made a banquet to the queen and the English ambassador, with
the whole two hundred crowns and the two tuns of wine.”
Archery from this time became an established pastime in Scotland,
amicably sharing men’s leisure with its old enemies golf and football,
while with the ladies it took rank as their chief, if not only, outdoor
pastime. Queen Margaret herself might possibly have taken her place
with credit beside the six Englishmen she backed in this match against
her son; for we are told by Leland and others that Henry’s sister was
no mean shot, while her unfortunate grandchild, Mary Queen of Scots,
was as fond of archery as was her cousin Elizabeth of England and many
another lady of that time.