Re: Bow and arrow

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:

>
>
> Discovery the other day had an interesting feature on the battle

of

> Azincourt which was won mainly by the English longbowmen.

Interesting

> fact: one man-at-arms had the price of two longbowmen. More
> intersting fact: The French were interested in taking hostages for
> later extorting a ransom. In that quest they completly ignored the
> English longbowman: they were nobodies.
>
> Who were these onbowmen, historically? The English and French

noblity

> should have the samestructure, having sprung from a common

Germanic

> source. But I haven't heard of Celtic Britons being especially
> connected with bows and arrows.
>
> Hans Kuhn had a long list of exclusively Germanic-Latin

(occasionally

> Celtic) cognates containing the vowel /a/, which he suspects of

being

> Nordwestblock. I don't recall whether
>
> arrow (Gothic arhWazna, ON o,rr, gen. o,rvar) and
> Latin arx "bow"
>
> was part of it, but they should be. Latin words containing the
> vowel /a/ are difficult to relate to the rest of Latin (Meillet
> (of 'ta:be:s'): "vocalisme 'a', mot populaire").
>
> Which is enough for me to suspect they these archers were

descended

> from Nordwestblock peoples arriving in England with the Saxon
> invasion.
>

You mean that their language and skills derive from immigrants of
the continent, which is not precisely the same thing. However
firstly your theory ignores the possibility of arms race being the
case (the English developed better bows, and encouraged the
peasantry to practice and compete). Secondly, I would think the most
obvious period for NWBlok entrance into Britain would have been the
Belgae (perhaps = Fir Bolg in Ireland) who fled the Romans. Thirdly,
why would Eastern Germanic contain a word from NW Europe?

Best Regards
Andrew