Author’s reflection on An Arrow Knows no master — thirteen lectures framing archery axioms in Western philosophy

Time walks as my fiercest rival. It gathers more than it gifts and measures each hour with a strict hand, so I stepped straight through that pressure and wrote this book. The seed took hold two years ago as a modest framework for club life—ethical, philosophical, service-minded—and then the project grew its own breath. Books roll in like weather—sudden, pressing, charged with pure purpose—so a door swings, a chair skids, and a voice takes the room completely now. Western thought stands as the chosen ground for this work. Shelves already brim with strong readings that pair archery with Eastern lineages and many friends flourish along that current with grace; the Western channel also carries deep power for the range—argument joined to responsibility, tradition joined to civic life, freedom joined to duty, decision joined to consequence. I pictured old giants stepping onto the line, each with a bow in hand, each answering through the lens of a lived ethic. A stance emerges, a grip settles, a release travels across air, and an idea earns proof in the body.

I wrote under the name Martin Smallridge and carried the book into the world through TIFAM CLG Publishing, Portlaoise, 2025; the imprint sits on the colophon like a bowyer’s stamp beside the number—ISBN 9798291021439—and Rachel Murray guided the final polish with a patient eye that steadied tone, references, and cadence line by line. The preface—“Striking Thought”—states the method with plain speech: two impulses share one spine here, a field journal born from mornings among alder and furze and a monograph that engages arguments with the seriousness they deserve. The chapters rise from lived scenes—a damp peg in October, a shy breeze turning the fletching, a heartbeat that steadies when anchor finds its station—and then they carry those scenes across a table where reasoning sits straight-backed and alert. Body and mind choose the same stance. The bow settles the shoulder while thought steadies the heart. Breath sets the beat, hands answer, eyes hold, and release carries the promise through air.

Around the table, a living company gathers. Plato pours water for Aristotle. Augustine lays a hymn beside Machiavelli’s ledger. The early Enlightenment throws the windows wide. Kant lays out rules as Rousseau draws a circle in the dust. Hegel spreads a map and Schopenhauer traces its darker valleys. Marx stacks tools on the bench while Kierkegaard lights a small candle for courage. Nietzsche flips the latch and Berdyaev feeds the fire. Toynbee marks epochs as phenomenology listens at the door. A long hallway of existentialism brightens, and the track turns toward lively materialisms. This single gathering sets the conversation and permits the lectures to focus on the life of practice rather than on repeated name-lists. Thirteen lectures form the arc, each one opening a room where an idea receives a test from the range and where the range receives language worthy of its dignity. A lecture offers a walkable lane—firm pace, vivid detail, a clean sequence of claims—then endnotes open a hedgerow path for those who wish to follow sources, variants, and historical echoes. Both routes travel toward the same clearing and welcome a reader’s own tempo; many walk the main lane first and then wander the hedgerow on a second passage, pencil in hand, boot heel stained from the course.

Design serves intention. The cover carries Luigi Sabatelli’s Four Horsemen, a storm-lit horizon that reminds every reader that aim and consequence share a frame. Each release enters history, each score card records an action, a choice, a standard. Inside, language leans toward image because the field teaches through image: October soil cools the palm and clarifies ground; the string bites and sings and gives weight to discipline; the thud of a shaft in straw or timber carries consequence into the ribs and steadies claims about responsibility. An arrow resting before the draw resembles a thought before speech; draw and proof arrive together, and the body teaches the sentence how to move. Theory walks beside practice as a steady companion and practice sharpens theory until it speaks with the clear tone of a coach on a frosty morning.

Purpose stays simple and strong: this book shapes ethos as much as it shares knowledge. Clubs across Ireland and beyond carry a culture inside every session—an attitude toward effort, a habit of encouragement, a sense of fairness over gear and access, a rhythm of welcome for the young and the old, the shy and the bold—so the lectures supply a shared vocabulary for that culture. They offer ways to speak about courage with humility, excellence with grace, tradition with life, experiment with prudence. In workshop circles, tea breaks, and long drives home from shoots, a captain can lift a sentence from these pages and set a gentle standard: aim with care, respect consequence, honour the ground and the people who share it. Influence grows through use: steadier anchors, kinder clubs, braver lives. A library copy gathers pencil marks and stories; a private copy rides in a bag beside a hex key set and a roll of tape; each chapter travels toward practice and practice answers with a clear verdict; the exchange continues and a culture forms.

Two pillars hold the middle of the sequence and continue to guide my own days on the line. Marx listens to labour, value, and the shape of community, and his ear for work suits the range. A bow carries many hours of hands across its limbs; each serving of string, each careful rub of wax, each modest repair at a kitchen table records a history of effort. Volunteer days sustain a club—field layout, target frames, safety ropes, lane markers, patient coaching of first anchors and shy releases—and gear circulates among members through lending, swapping, and repair, small economies that reveal bonds far richer than cash. Fair pricing strengthens participation across ages and incomes; a culture of repair extends the life of tools and deepens knowledge; conversations about sponsorships, events, and access gain clarity when we speak directly about value—material and social. From this attention arise practices that any club can adopt: share skill, document repairs, publish transparent budgets, welcome apprenticeships in bow maintenance, build fairness into pricing and lending, celebrate volunteer craft as central to the sport rather than as backstage labour. Kierkegaard stands beside the person at full draw and writes the single individual with bracing immediacy; that focus aligns with the instant before release when a person chooses with steady breath and an awake conscience. Technique prepares the body and community offers support; only the person can send the arrow; courage becomes action in that second and then carries into family, work, friendship, and civic duty. The range trains this habit; the habit walks outward through the day. I have watched teenagers transform posture in school because they learned that kind of decision on a soggy Saturday, and that witness affirms a simple truth: a field course educates the soul as surely as any classroom.

Method follows the same ethic. I wrote each lecture with field tests in mind: an argument about agency matured under a crosswind on a Laois afternoon; a paragraph on responsibility strengthened after a wayward end and a frank conversation with a friend; a reflection on craft sharpened during a patient repair of a club bow with a teenager watching each step. The range edited me and I welcomed the edit; claims earn their keep through conduct and conduct shows itself on the ground before any page grants approval. Pace mirrors a well-set course—bends through alder and openings to quarry light—so a page of close reasoning yields to a paragraph where the field breathes, then a lyrical crest returns to a firm sequence of claims. Readers who favour one mode find company in the other and many report that the alternation keeps attention fresh across the thirteen stages; the notes extend that experience for those who relish source trails and historical layers and a person can walk from straw bale to library stack and back again with ease.

Hospitality shaped production choices. Legibility matters in a book intended for long use, so margins, type, and spacing seek comfort across late evenings and early mornings. The binding sits easy in the hand, the paper accepts ink with a soft sheen that rests the eyes, and the spine survives bags, benches, and tables with cheerful resilience. Geography and season offered cadence to the prose as well: Portlaoise mornings, Wexford hedges, pale quarries, quicksilver Irish afternoons. Rooks on a gatepost kept time for many drafts, a tractor’s far hum lent pulse to a paragraph on labour, and twilight over a damp field trimmed excess from a long period and left a clean line; archery rises from such elements as surely as it rises from wood, fibre, and steel, so the sentences carry their weather openly.

Audience stays vivid in my mind: young archers with a question bright in the throat; coaches shaping ethos through example and story; captains and founders building clubs where fairness breathes easily; readers who work with ideas and seek the feeling of soles against ground while thinking; parents watching children find courage through small, steady victories; elders whose hands remember yew and linen across decades. The book meets these people where they stand and offers something useful—a phrase that eases teaching, a thought that steadies pride, an image that anchors patience, a perspective that strengthens solidarity. Training nights welcome both the diagram and the meditation: warm-ups unfold, distance work sharpens focus, then a short conversation about attention or fairness closes the circle; the next session builds on that foundation with a touch more range on the target and a touch more range in the mind; the lectures supply fuel for that final cup of tea.

Gratitude moves like a quiet river beneath the text. TIFAM offered a harbour where editorial care and community purpose reinforce each other; Rachel Murray’s precision kept the book safe for readers who demand accuracy; friends across clubs shared stories and corrected emphases with good humour; family kept warmth in the house while drafts multiplied. All of this enters the finished work as an undertone of fellowship, a steady drone beneath the tune. From this ground emerge three lanes of influence that I hope to see flourish. First, a personal lane: a reader grows steadier on the line and in life through clearer intention, stronger attention, and brave release. Second, a communal lane: clubs adopt a deeper ethic of fairness, service, and craft, conversations about gear, access, and mentorship gain maturity, and volunteer labour receives esteem equal to podiums and medals. Third, a cultural lane: archery claims its rightful place as a teacher of civic virtues—responsibility, gratitude, solidarity—and speaks to schools, councils, and arts bodies with confidence born from lived practice; these lanes meet at a simple crossroads—act with care, accept consequence, share the ground.

Cover art continues to work on me each time I lift the volume. Sabatelli’s riders sweep across the horizon with a force that speaks to consequence; every aim bears weight and every release enters a world alive with other arrows and choices. The image stands as a small memento of gravity within freedom and sets the key at the door; inside, scenes from practice finish the reflection because scenes formed the beam of the work. Dawn rises over a Laois field, breath lifts like a small flock, a leather tab warms the hand, a feather whispers across a glove. Distant cattle shift, a rook scolds the gatepost and sets a tempo, the arrow rests before the draw like a thought before speech, a stray gust brushes the skin and moves the line by a hair’s breadth, a friend laughs three lanes over, a child waits for the thud, the thud arrives and carries through ribs into memory, a kettle hums in the clubhouse, hands wipe on jackets, a page opens, a line asks for company. This sequence repeats across weeks and across lives, and the book stands inside that sequence as one more companion.

Every line serves a hope that stays plain and reachable. A person walks from these pages toward the line with clearer intention and steadier breath; a club adopts simple practices that elevate fairness and care; a wider circle recognises archery as an art that educates, a sport that cultivates character, and a culture that gifts communities with grace. The influence grows quietly, like grass after rain. Each lecture offers a seed, each practice session waters it, and each conversation in a car park or a kitchen gives it sun. I write these closing paragraphs with humility and gratitude. Every sentence benefited from companions seen and unseen; every chapter sought harmony between hand and head; every arrow I released during these years whispered the same instruction—stand with clarity, breathe with attention, release with courage, learn with joy. I carry that instruction into the next project and into the next quiet hour at the range. Weather clears, field calls, mind answers, an arrow flies, and the work begins again.