howdy doody
in reading a few old texts and then again hearing in films ... people talk about CLOTH YARD SHAFTS
what does this refer to???
does it just mean an arrow shaft thats a yard long???
more likely a piece of trivia than a traditional tackle question
thanks
MIK
Cloth Yard Shaft
Moderator: Moderators
MIK,
a great piece of trivia it is too!
My sleuthing turned up this:
There's even more trivia regarding old measures at the link I got this from:
http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/length.htm
enjoy!
Erron
a great piece of trivia it is too!
My sleuthing turned up this:
A cloth-yard was used to measure cloth. It is 37 inches long (94 cm), which is an inch longer than an ordinary yard. A cloth-yard shaft was an arrow a cloth-yard long.
There's even more trivia regarding old measures at the link I got this from:
http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/length.htm
enjoy!
Erron
-
Dennis La Varenne
- Posts: 1776
- Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2003 10:56 pm
- Location: Tocumwal, NSW. Australia
Mik,
I am going to confuse the clothyard issue by disputing the length of the clothyard.
Not many people realise that the English yard was not standardized until around the time of Napoleon when French science devised the metric system with which we are now familiar.
It was around the same time that the English began to standardise their own system of measures which, like that of the French up that time was roughly equivalent to that of the English and varied considerably from province to province as did that of the English which varied from county to county.
The motivating force in each case was the necessity for the state to raise revenues which were the same all over the country and hence the necessity to have a standardised system of measurements to ensure that the same level of taxation was raised in each area.
Therefore, measures of length, volume and mass/weight needed standardising for this purpose. Time had been standardised for some time already because of religious requirements.
Erron's discovered definition of a clothyard being 37 inches may not be altogether true because of this, at least not for the times of the English military longbow.
In the very early days of English military archery (around the 1300s) there existed the length measurement of an ell which was a measure used for measuring cloth and such. Its definition (in Latin which was the language of scholarship and science of the time) was the following - TRES PEDES FACIENT ULLNAM - or - three feet make an ell (???yard).
In the English language of the times, a 'yerd' or yard was used to refer to two things - the length of a rod or stick used for measuring and/or a longish stick or rod used for beating people. The one may have been used as the local slang for the other.
However, the old ell was apparently closer to 27 inches modern inches as a length measure. There seems to be some kind of etymological connection beween the two terms of ell and yard. I would further refer the readers to the highly standardised lengths of the arrows retrieved from the Mary Rose which were mostly 30 modern inches in length without the head. The overall length would have only increased about 2 modern inches with the attachment of the standard type 16 head (I think it was) of the times making 32 - 33 inches at most.
My problem arises with the actual term itself and its origins of which I have not been able to discover.
I have a suspicion that the term 'clothyard' as applied to the length of the English military longbowman's arrow may be quite modern, perhaps dating from the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The White Company), or Lord Byron (I think it was called The Black Knight).
Certainly the term clothyard was not used by Geoffrey Chaucer in describing his archer/forester when he composed the Canterbury Tales in the late 1300s - at least not when I last read them in the original Middle English. His only reference to the forester's arrows was to -
'a shef of pecock arwes' - (a sheaf or bundle of arrows which were tied together in the middle and fletched with peacock feathers).
I am of the view which I cannot prove at this stage that the lenghts of the military arrows were probably different at different times in history depending upon the average height of military archers.
Other than to increase arrow mass over short to moderate distance, there is no advantage in having arrows very much longer than the archer's draw length.
This was pointed out quite forcefully by Roger Ascham in Toxophilus when he enjoined archers to 'keepe a lengthe' or to maintain a consisten draw length, and that he preferred the older style of head (which had a recess behind the point which alerted he archer that he had drawn the arrow a specific distance) over the newer smaller head of his time which was difficult to keepe a lengthe with.
We do know that a military sheaf of arrows contained about 8 flight arrows for shooting at long distance into massed formations as a sort of skirmishing tactic much like the old time 'slingers' and javelin throwers who tried to 'rattle' the enemy in the early stages of a battle, and that there were a further 16 or so heavy 'battle' arrows used at much shorter range for armour piercing and more deliberate damage.
Drawing to the ear as was evidently done in the case of military archery still requires a person of heroic stature to draw any kind of arrow to Ascham's 'lenghe' and attain 36 or 37 modern inches. People of this stature were rarer in Mediaeval Europe than they are today and it would be well nigh impossible to staff an army with such people for practical purposes.
There are pictures of a person drawing an arrow to just over 30 inches in Hardy's 'Longbow, A Social and Miliary History' edition 2 paperback. I believe that there are even more people doing it now, but the average modern human cannot and will not ever be able to do this even with light bows. They simply aren't long enough.
Perhaps the old military archers still drew to the ear, but it may have been a much more realistic length relating to an average human size who still drew the arrow to the back of the head and level with his ear at the other end. It is this particular distance which is under debate.
The clothyard shaft of history may have been more a figment of romance than an actuality. It arrow length well have been standardised on some unit of the manchesterer's measure, but I do not believe that we know just what that measurement was.
Dennis La Varenne
I am going to confuse the clothyard issue by disputing the length of the clothyard.
Not many people realise that the English yard was not standardized until around the time of Napoleon when French science devised the metric system with which we are now familiar.
It was around the same time that the English began to standardise their own system of measures which, like that of the French up that time was roughly equivalent to that of the English and varied considerably from province to province as did that of the English which varied from county to county.
The motivating force in each case was the necessity for the state to raise revenues which were the same all over the country and hence the necessity to have a standardised system of measurements to ensure that the same level of taxation was raised in each area.
Therefore, measures of length, volume and mass/weight needed standardising for this purpose. Time had been standardised for some time already because of religious requirements.
Erron's discovered definition of a clothyard being 37 inches may not be altogether true because of this, at least not for the times of the English military longbow.
In the very early days of English military archery (around the 1300s) there existed the length measurement of an ell which was a measure used for measuring cloth and such. Its definition (in Latin which was the language of scholarship and science of the time) was the following - TRES PEDES FACIENT ULLNAM - or - three feet make an ell (???yard).
In the English language of the times, a 'yerd' or yard was used to refer to two things - the length of a rod or stick used for measuring and/or a longish stick or rod used for beating people. The one may have been used as the local slang for the other.
However, the old ell was apparently closer to 27 inches modern inches as a length measure. There seems to be some kind of etymological connection beween the two terms of ell and yard. I would further refer the readers to the highly standardised lengths of the arrows retrieved from the Mary Rose which were mostly 30 modern inches in length without the head. The overall length would have only increased about 2 modern inches with the attachment of the standard type 16 head (I think it was) of the times making 32 - 33 inches at most.
My problem arises with the actual term itself and its origins of which I have not been able to discover.
I have a suspicion that the term 'clothyard' as applied to the length of the English military longbowman's arrow may be quite modern, perhaps dating from the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The White Company), or Lord Byron (I think it was called The Black Knight).
Certainly the term clothyard was not used by Geoffrey Chaucer in describing his archer/forester when he composed the Canterbury Tales in the late 1300s - at least not when I last read them in the original Middle English. His only reference to the forester's arrows was to -
'a shef of pecock arwes' - (a sheaf or bundle of arrows which were tied together in the middle and fletched with peacock feathers).
I am of the view which I cannot prove at this stage that the lenghts of the military arrows were probably different at different times in history depending upon the average height of military archers.
Other than to increase arrow mass over short to moderate distance, there is no advantage in having arrows very much longer than the archer's draw length.
This was pointed out quite forcefully by Roger Ascham in Toxophilus when he enjoined archers to 'keepe a lengthe' or to maintain a consisten draw length, and that he preferred the older style of head (which had a recess behind the point which alerted he archer that he had drawn the arrow a specific distance) over the newer smaller head of his time which was difficult to keepe a lengthe with.
We do know that a military sheaf of arrows contained about 8 flight arrows for shooting at long distance into massed formations as a sort of skirmishing tactic much like the old time 'slingers' and javelin throwers who tried to 'rattle' the enemy in the early stages of a battle, and that there were a further 16 or so heavy 'battle' arrows used at much shorter range for armour piercing and more deliberate damage.
Drawing to the ear as was evidently done in the case of military archery still requires a person of heroic stature to draw any kind of arrow to Ascham's 'lenghe' and attain 36 or 37 modern inches. People of this stature were rarer in Mediaeval Europe than they are today and it would be well nigh impossible to staff an army with such people for practical purposes.
There are pictures of a person drawing an arrow to just over 30 inches in Hardy's 'Longbow, A Social and Miliary History' edition 2 paperback. I believe that there are even more people doing it now, but the average modern human cannot and will not ever be able to do this even with light bows. They simply aren't long enough.
Perhaps the old military archers still drew to the ear, but it may have been a much more realistic length relating to an average human size who still drew the arrow to the back of the head and level with his ear at the other end. It is this particular distance which is under debate.
The clothyard shaft of history may have been more a figment of romance than an actuality. It arrow length well have been standardised on some unit of the manchesterer's measure, but I do not believe that we know just what that measurement was.
Dennis La Varenne
