Roger Ascham on good shooting

[Dennis La Varenne]

To all, especially those taking up shooting in the English Long Warbow,

I have done a translation into modern Australian English of a short passage from Ascham's Toxophilus from pages 144 to 147 of an early edition dealing with faults in shooting form. It is done it in two halves on an A4 page as a PDF document, so it should be downloadable.

The left hand column is in the original Tudor English and maintains as far as possible the original Tudor spelling. The right hand column is my translation. I have tried to pair the paragraphs so the original can be compared directly with the translation, and I have purposely broken up some of the original paragraphs and their translation for readability. There are a couple of notes at the end of the translation on Tudor spelling conventions. Any errors or omissions are entirely mine of course.

The translation is not a word for word translation. Such a translation would make no sense to a modern reader because many of the words and expressions no longer exist in modern usage. I have translated the 'sense and meaning' of what he wrote into everyday modern Australian English.

It is clear that Roger had quite a sense of humour, and many of the faults of form about which he complained persist today.

[wishsong]

Thanks heaps Dennis ... awesome stuff !


"Now, after the arrow is gone, men have many
faults which are the result of bad habit, especially
yelling after their arrows and using language
scarcely suitable for such an honest pasttime. "

[rodlonq]

Very interesting and also amusing Dennis, thanks for posting it. The light at the end of the tunnel for me is;

"Finally, a man can remove
all the faults from shooting so that there is
nothing left but good shooting."

Although the quote wishsong put forward is a cracker .

Cheers............. Rod