The Beautiful One drives a great big Ford dually long-bed pickup truck so that she can pull a horse trailer.
Yesterday, while she and my amazing daughter, the Sword Fighter, were driving down the road running errands, some obnoxious punk cut them off. And, to demonstrate his degree of obnoxiousness, knowing he was in the wrong, he flipped them off . . .
This angered my daughter, riding as passenger. So, in her moment of anger, she yelled out the window “Pluck Yew!!” Yes. That’s what she said. And, there is a reason. . .
My daughter, a great student of history, is also an archer.
A little back ground . . .
The English military archers during the Middle Ages used long bows. The longbow as we recognize it today, measuring around the height of a man, made its major appearance during the 13th century. It was the English prowess with the longbow that made the English army so formidable during this period of time. And the English soldiers could accurately shoot these weapons between 200 and 250 yards, the distance of 2 ½ football fields.
You need to understand that these longbows commonly had a draw weight of 80-100 lbs. That means that the archer had to be strong enough to pull up to 100 lbs. as he drew the arrow back in to firing position and held it there while aiming.
The archer would use his pointer, middle and ring fingers (2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers) to pull back on the string, while holding the arrow in place.
70% of the weight would rest on his middle finger, with 20% of the weight on the ring finger and 10% of the weight on his pointer finger. That means that the archer was holding up to 70 lbs. of weight on his middle finger.
This All Started Because of the French
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle fingers of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger, it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbows and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future.
The famous English long bow was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as “plucking the yew” or “pluck yew.”
Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, “See!! We can still pluck yew!”
Since pluck yew is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative. And, thus, the words are now often used in conjunction with the one-finger salute that has become famous to this day.
There you have it . . . another essential bit of history you need to understand.
Shooting the long bow arrow fletched with pheasant feathers was often referred to by the English archers as “giving the bird.”
And, there yew have it. Yew thought yew knew every plucking thing . . . didn’t yew?!
