Bow, Blood, and Charter
On the Rock of Dunamase the limestone rises with a clenched grammar, as though the earth had learned law from iron, and as though the plain of Laois, which looks gentle when the sun lies low, had carried a memory…
Category Lesser things & trivia
Iron in the Wind: The Making of Saint Edmund
In sanguine martyrum regna Christianorum radicantur¹—in the blood of martyrs the realms of Christians take root. For a medieval mind that line had the weight of a weather proverb. It described how power settled into the soil. A grave that…
The Blood of Limoges — Fire, Record, and the Measure of a Prince
Dust deepened within the breach while heat raised a chalky veil from crushed ashlar, and a litter advanced in a long, breathing sway as four shoulders moved with choir-like discipline and the poles sang against their leather slings. Fever pressed…
Corridor of Courage
Memento mori opens the late-October syllabus, and dies irae, dies illa gathers vigil air into study. Samhain with All Souls sets a horizon where remembrance carries ethical weight under eschatological pressure. An archer approaches the line and receives a rite…
A Reckoning in the Ice
Some men arrive larger than their birthplaces. They carry a heat that pushes maps outward, seeks new borders, stamps a name into the grain of years. When such a figure drops, ordinary endings jar the ear. An unassuming death jars…
The Barelegged King’s End
Wind comes off the Irish Sea with a brisk salt that pricks the lip and lifts the gull-cry over the lough, and the ground in Down remembers. The turf keeps a grain of hoof and boot, a thin echo of…
The Shadow of the Gallowglass: Re-examining the Role of the Archer in Medieval Irish Warfare.
You can feel it in the land still, if you’re quiet enough. The way the past breathes up through the soil. We talk of the great warriors, the high kings, the men who stood shield to shield with sword and…
The Butcher’s Bill at Evesham
There are stories that feel true because we want them to be. Stories of a clean end, a single, meaningful moment that cuts a life’s thread. A hero stands against the odds, and a fatal, well-aimed arrow finds him. It’s…...
An Arrow for the Earl
strange heat it was, the summer of 1399. The kind of heat that presses down on the land and makes the air thick with waiting. You could feel it in the quiet of the fields and the low murmur of…...
The Guild and the Crown
In the hush between the tolling of bells and the hiss of the string, something else stirred in the guildhalls of medieval Flanders and England—something older than the arrows they notched and swifter than the oaths they swore. While the…...
Charles the Bold and the Gamble of Archers
I came across him not in a book, but in a footnote misquoted in the margin of another. It was a binding so cracked it seemed to wheeze when opened, part of a bundle I’d been lent by a Flemish…...
Lesser things and trivia… (Column)
The story I’m about to tell you is not one that fits neatly into the grand histories of kings and battles, nor does it appear in the sweeping narratives of medieval glory or tragedy. It is a whisper at the…...
The Arrows That Sang Against Steel: The Spanish Conquest and the Vanishing Echo of Indigenous Archery
You never forget the first book that cuts you. The one that leaves a wound, not in flesh, but in the quiet, unguarded place where thoughts sleep before they wake to meaning. Mine was a battered volume on the The…...
Lesser things and trivia column
The leaden days of socialist monotony in the 1970s and 80s had an odd way of pressing on the spirit, like a cold fog that never actually lifted. But even in the dreary grind of lining up for bread, sugar…...
Freedom’s Quiet Flame
The dimly lit, rain-soaked cinemas of 1980s Soviet life provided brief but significant havens. Among the films, Sergei Tarasov's 1985 Чернaя стрела (The Black Arrow) stood out not only as entertainment but also as an event—an artefact of a society struggling with its paradoxes. Under the heavy shadow of a collapsing Soviet ideology, this rendition of Robert Louis Stevenson's story connected as both metaphor and adventure, a revolt against the ordinary disguised as historical epic.
The Ballad of Yew
The ancient whisper from the heart of Ireland, the yew bow, sings a tune etched amongst the soft susurrations of leaves in the forgotten wood. A weapon, not truly; an amulet, a bridge into the Othercrowd, where the Sídhe people…...
Lesser things and trivia…
(A monthly column) The arrow, both ancient and resiliant, has for centuries represented more than ordinary blend of wood and steel. She is an instrument of swift death, and her silent flight often brings forth something beyond a simple ending,…...
Quivers of Quirk: Archery’s Oddballs and Arrow-Slinging Antics
The Robin Hood legends have cemented his place as a peerless marksman, but let's be real: nobody in any kind of serious competition these days tries the "split the arrow" stunt. Real archers know the stupidity of making them waste a perfectly good arrow. But it's a story that charms-to show, once again, that when it comes to archery, as with much in life, the question of branding is paramount.
Lesser things and trivia…
“Old stories endure, even as the world changes’”. This is the tale of the Phantom Archer of Dunluce. As they say, the legend is deeply rooted in the castle's history and has been passed down from generation to generation. The ruins of Dunluce Castle stand among the windswept cliffs of Antrim and are a reminder of human ambition in the face of the power of nature.
Bullseye My Gob!: An Archery Ramble Through History, Hilarity, and Humbug
Indeed, the dance of an arrow as it traverses the distant of ‘from – to’, may seem oddly bizarre. A fleeting moment of grace, a trajectory that defies gravity, a vibrant intention and surrender. A paradox, like life itself, isn’t…...
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