Ever since a hairy primitive first picked up a stone and threw it, man
has tried to find better and better ways to strike from a safe distance.
The devices which he has produced for this purpose have been many and
varied, yet, strangely enough, remarkable similarities often occur
between inventions of widely separated areas. In ancient Peruvian graves
have been found cord slings for hurling stones almost identical with
those used by herd boys in Palestine today, as in the time of David and
Goliath. Bronze arrowheads from prehistoric Japan are much the same as
those excavated from Roman Britain. The bow has several different
characteristic forms distributed throughout the world, but its
fundamental principle is everywhere the same.
[Illustration: _Fig. 37 (Left). A light crossbow like this would be
used by a young man or an athletic girl. Flemish, XV century._]
[Illustration: _Fig. 38 (Below). Made a little lighter. A prodd or
bullet-shooting crossbow, probably for a lady._]
The first projectile-throwing arm appropriate to an art museum is the
crossbow, which is simply a bow mounted on a wooden stock provided with
a catch and trigger, so that the bow could be carried ready to shoot.
This was a great convenience in hunting or war, because otherwise the
time lost in drawing the bow might give the victim opportunity to
escape. Moreover, it was soon found that the application of mechanical
devices permitted the use of a bow much stronger than any man could draw
unaided.
[Illustration: _Fig. 39. It took a powerful man to wind and shoot
this heavy Swiss hunting crossbow, even with the cranequin to help
wind!_]
[Illustration: _Fig. 40. If you take off the outer case, these three
parts make up the entire mechanism of the cranequin._]
[Illustration: _Fig. 41. Mechanism of a crossbow lock, complicated
but effective._]
Fig. 37 shows a light Flemish crossbow of the fifteenth century. Its
wooden stock is inlaid with white and with green stained bone in
openwork patterns. This type of crossbow required mechanical assistance
to pull the string back to the catch which would hold it until the
moment should arrive to shoot; the instrument employed was called a
_goat’s foot_ lever.
The crossbow of Fig. 38 is Italian work of the sixteenth century. The
bow is light enough to be pulled by the hands alone, without mechanical
assistance. It had a double string, with a little pouch attached between
the two strands, and shot small bullets, instead of arrows. The wooden
stock is beautifully carved and the metal parts are damascened with
arabesques in gold. This type of light crossbow was especially popular
with aristocratic ladies who are frequently represented shooting it in
hunting tapestries of the period.
In Fig. 39 is shown a very powerful hunting crossbow of the seventeenth
century. The bow is of steel, two inches wide and a third of an inch
thick. The bowstring resembles a piece of heavy rope. To pull this
string, bending a steel spring as massive as this, requires a tremendous
power and an immense strength in the mechanism which will hold the
fully-drawn bow until the moment for its release.
The pulling power is supplied by a device, also shown in the
illustration (Fig. 39) called a _cranequin_ or _cric_. It is in
mechanical respects essentially identical with a modern geared
automobile jack, although, of course, it pulls instead of lifts (Fig.
40). A force of fifty pounds applied to the handle generates on the claw
which grasps the bowstring a pull of more than two tons! Fig. 41 shows
the mechanism for holding and releasing the string. (These parts are, of
course, normally invisible, being hidden inside the wooden stock).
Returning to the artistic aspects of the crossbow of Fig. 39, we observe
that the whole of the wooden stock is inlaid with plates of white stag
horn engraved with scenes illustrating the legend of William
Tell—certainly an appropriate decoration! The bow is quite plain except
for the addition of decorative pompoms of colored wool, but the
cranequin gear housing is elaborately etched with representations of
Biblical and mythological personages, strapwork, and interlace, much of
this unfortunately now worn away.