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Norman arrows.

  • 02-10-2018 2:48pm
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 710 ✭✭✭


    Anybody know what did Norman arrows look like when they were using them in Ireland. Around the 14th - 17th century.


Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,108 ✭✭✭pedroeibar1


    I suggest you check your dates. By the 14th century the Normans had been Hibernicised. By the 17th century no self respecting armed man would deign to be seen with anything less than an arquebus!


  • Registered Users Posts: 710 ✭✭✭Mach Two


    I suggest you check your dates. By the 14th century the Normans had been Hibernicised. By the 17th century no self respecting armed man would deign to be seen with anything less than an arquebus!

    Thanks for your reply. I was never very good at history. Although I do have an interest in how people lived at that time. An arquebus? I must Google it. They must have been welcomed in to society if they became part of society so quickly.

    When they were using arrows what did they look like. Any idea when they stopped using arrows as a means of defence in Ireland.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    Mach Two wrote: »
    They must have been welcomed in to society if they became part of society so quickly.

    Well they first started coming in the 12th century 1169 so 200 years is quite a time to get acclimatised, and assimilated. In 1367 their feet were so far under the table that King Edward III had to send over one of his dimmer sons to call a parliament in Kilkenny and pass the famous Statutes of Kilkenny, a sort of set of Jim Crow laws for the 14th century which forbade Irishmen of Anglo Norman ancestry from, among other things:
    Speaking Irish in business or administration
    Accepting judgements from Brehon Courts
    Adopting the Brehon system of land ownership
    Riding horses bareback
    Wearing Irish-style clothes (Frenchmen preferring Irish fashions? THAT'S WEIRD!!!
    Patronising Gaelic bards and minstrels
    intermarrying with Gaelic families.

    Read that last one again: some clown thought it would be a good idea to pass a law compelling Englishmen and Frenchmen to keep their hands off Irish women!!! How do you think that one worked out?? :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 710 ✭✭✭Mach Two


    Well they first started coming in the 12th century 1169 so 200 years is quite a time to get acclimatised, and assimilated. In 1367 their feet were so far under the table that King Edward III had to send over one of his dimmer sons to call a parliament in Kilkenny and pass the famous Statutes of Kilkenny, a sort of set of Jim Crow laws for the 14th century which forbade Irishmen of Anglo Norman ancestry from, among other things:
    Speaking Irish in business or administration
    Accepting judgements from Brehon Courts
    Adopting the Brehon system of land ownership
    Riding horses bareback
    Wearing Irish-style clothes (Frenchmen preferring Irish fashions? THAT'S WEIRD!!!
    Patronising Gaelic bards and minstrels
    intermarrying with Gaelic families.

    Read that last one again: some clown thought it would be a good idea to pass a law compelling Englishmen and Frenchmen to keep their hands off Irish women!!! How do you think that one worked out?? :)

    What was the Brehon system of land ownership again. I remember reading about that before. What are bards and minstrels.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,857 ✭✭✭TheQuietFella


    Mach Two wrote: »
    What was the Brehon system of land ownership again. I remember reading about that before. What are bards and minstrels.

    Google it!


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  • Registered Users Posts: 8,413 ✭✭✭Markcheese


    Didn't the arrow head depend on who they were shooting against, flatter tips for unarmoured opponents, needle bodkins against mail and later bodkins against plate armour
    And would they have gone to the trouble of having full on Warbows/longbow for fighting largely unarmoured irish opponents..
    (when did the Norman's start adopting welsh longbow anyways?

    Slava ukraini 🇺🇦



  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,934 ✭✭✭robp


    Quite a lot of iron arrow heads have been found from Viking and medieval sites such as Tulsk, Dublin, Waterford. Look at the published reports. A few wooden arrow shafts have been found too.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,934 ✭✭✭robp


    Mach Two wrote: »
    I suggest you check your dates. By the 14th century the Normans had been Hibernicised. By the 17th century no self respecting armed man would deign to be seen with anything less than an arquebus!

    Thanks for your reply. I was never very good at history. Although I do have an interest in how people lived  at that time. An arquebus? I must Google it. They must have been welcomed in to society if they became part of society so quickly.

    When they were using arrows  what did they look like. Any idea when they stopped using arrows as a means of defence in Ireland.
    I have seen references to Irish using darts and arrows during the Battle of Glenmalure in 1580.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,934 ✭✭✭robp


    I suggest you check your dates. By the 14th century the Normans had been Hibernicised. By the 17th century no self respecting armed man would deign to be seen with anything less than an arquebus!
    The bow was certainly was not a favoured weapon of war in the 16th century but it was not extinct.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,108 ✭✭✭pedroeibar1


    robp wrote: »
    The bow was certainly was not a favoured weapon of war in the 16th century but it was not extinct.
    Of course bows were not extinct! Don’t forget that Mad Jack Churchill used his longbow to kill a German in 1941. Even the 1252 Law requiring Englishmen aged 15-50 to practice at the butts on Sundays was not repealed until the Gaming Act 1960.
    But by the 1450’s the longbow had been largely superseded by the crossbow, even though Pope Innocent II in 1139 had banned their use against Christians. Ninety percent of the English longbow archers became casualties at the Battle of Castillon (1453) considered to be both the last battle of the Hundred Years' War and the last time longbows were used tactically.

    In Ireland, darts were short spears that could be used for either stabbing or throwing and were a standard weapon of the kern until they could capture a firearm and lay them aside along with the bow and arrow. Bows were expensive, took a long time to make, not easy to use effectively and useless in untrained hands.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,116 ✭✭✭archer22


    The Longbow was a superb weapon with a much higher rate of fire than either the Crossbow or the earlier firearms...also far more accurate than early non rifled firearms.

    It's drawback was that it required years of endless training to master whereas the firearm and crossbow could basically be given to any auld eejit once he was shown how to load it point it at the enemy and pull the trigger.

    Surprising thing about the Longbow and recurve bows is that they were to be found in virtually all cultures across the globe and in widespread use...the Irish being a notable exception in that they rarely used them, and what little use there was seems to have been after the arrival of the Normans and even then it appears to have been very much the exception


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,116 ✭✭✭archer22


    Mach Two wrote: »
    Anybody know what did Norman arrows look like when they were using them in Ireland. Around the 14th - 17th century.

    I would say if you look through a list of medieval arrows the Normans would have been using virtually all of them...both for hunting and warfare.
    I assume though the most common in use in Ireland would have been the broadhead arrow..for as another poster pointed out there would have been little use for the specialist arrows designed to pierce armour.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,934 ✭✭✭robp


    archer22 wrote: »
    Surprising thing about the Longbow and recurve bows is that they were to be found in virtually all cultures across the globe and in widespread use...the Irish being a notable exception in that they rarely used them, and what little use there was seems to have been after the arrival of the Normans and even then it appears to have been very much the exception

    It does indeed seem that the Normans or the Vikings introduced the bow as you say. It could have been here but we just have so little evidence. Of course it was a reintroduction rather as the bow was widespread in the Bronze Age. It seems odd that people would jus stop using such a useful tool at the end of the Bronze Age but then again it is not the only example. Pottery is another case of a very common technology that appears to have just dropped at the end of the Bronze Age in Ireland.


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