Plucking Yew
By Shawn McDonald
In the last scene of the movie Le Mans, Steve McQueen raises the back of his hand and his index and center finger at his fellow competitor at the end of the race. I didn’t know what it meant back in 1971. I thought it might be McQueen saluting the winner, like a thumbs up, European-style. I found out much later in life that it is a salute, in a different sort of way.
It all began back on October 25th, in the year 1415, on the muddy battlefields of Agincourt, France. King Henry V of England, along with a bunch of thugs called knights and longbow archers, crossed the English Channel to invade France: the aim, to reclaim his questionable rights to the kingdom of France. The French king, Charles VI, was needless to say not all that keen that these English pigs with runny noses were marching through his country, bringing their disgustingly bland food and bad table manners with them. So Henry and his army were chased around northwest France by those sissy boys of the French aristocracy, who put snuff up their noses so they wouldn’t have to smell the pig’s brains and snails that they so favored before utilizing their new modification of the kiss, in which they used their tongues.
You see I’m of Irish descent, and have no love of anything resembling fish and chips, stiff upper lips or the massacres of millions of native peoples so the sun will never set on the English empire. Don’t get me wrong I’m not on the Frenchies’ side either! I mean, who wants to admit to being French? The English may have bad food, but at least they don’t try to cover it up with smelly sauces and call it ‘cuisine’, as the French do. The English may smell bad, but at least they don’t kill whales and use the blubber to make perfume to cover their body’s bad smell as the French did back then – because they believed bathing was unhealthy. (I will admit, under torture by the Spanish inquisition, that I am indeed a third French. That explains some of the stink from this story).
The French, in their usual haughty way, verbally taunted the tired, wet and starving Englishmen, who had just slogged their way through 250 miles of French countryside before the battle. They were especially cursing the famed English longbow archers.
The English longbow was a devastating military force from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. It was this weapon, which conquered Wales and Scotland, which gave the English their victories in the Hundred Years War, and permitted England to replace France as the foremost military power in Medieval Europe. The longbow was the machine gun of the middle ages: accurate, deadly, possessed of a long-range and rapid rate of fire of 10 to 12 arrows per minute, the flight of its missiles was likened to a storm. Cheap and simple enough for the yeoman to own and master, it made him superior to a knight on the field of battle. The longbow was up to six feet long in its firing position, while the longbow men’s’ averaged height was only 5’2" tall. The finest bows were made from yew trees.
What the French Knights were yelling was that the next day, when they had crushed the English army, they would cut off the two fingers the longbow men used to pull the bowstring back, so they would never again be able to use that weapon against them. Of course that was the least they would do to the longbow men, if they hadn’t already cut off their heads, or their entire hands.
The French had amassed 25,000 knights, infantry and archers to fight Henry V’s army of only 5,000. This looked like a recipe for enormous catastrophe to the English. It wasn’t a question of how many would die, but of how many would remain alive.
The next day, on those fields of Agincourt, the French suffered their greatest loss and the English achieved their greatest victory. Between seven and ten thousand French men died, compared to less than 100 English deaths.
Much of the victory could be claimed by the superiority of those English longbow men. As a defiant sign to the defeated French, the longbow men would raise those two fingers – the same two they used to pull the bowstring – at them to show they still had them to fight with. They could indeed still pluck yew.
So the next time someone challenges your ability to win no matter the odds, proudly raise your two fingers at your opponent and say, "Pluck Yew."
By Shawn McDonald
In the last scene of the movie Le Mans, Steve McQueen raises the back of his hand and his index and center finger at his fellow competitor at the end of the race. I didn’t know what it meant back in 1971. I thought it might be McQueen saluting the winner, like a thumbs up, European-style. I found out much later in life that it is a salute, in a different sort of way.
It all began back on October 25th, in the year 1415, on the muddy battlefields of Agincourt, France. King Henry V of England, along with a bunch of thugs called knights and longbow archers, crossed the English Channel to invade France: the aim, to reclaim his questionable rights to the kingdom of France. The French king, Charles VI, was needless to say not all that keen that these English pigs with runny noses were marching through his country, bringing their disgustingly bland food and bad table manners with them. So Henry and his army were chased around northwest France by those sissy boys of the French aristocracy, who put snuff up their noses so they wouldn’t have to smell the pig’s brains and snails that they so favored before utilizing their new modification of the kiss, in which they used their tongues.
You see I’m of Irish descent, and have no love of anything resembling fish and chips, stiff upper lips or the massacres of millions of native peoples so the sun will never set on the English empire. Don’t get me wrong I’m not on the Frenchies’ side either! I mean, who wants to admit to being French? The English may have bad food, but at least they don’t try to cover it up with smelly sauces and call it ‘cuisine’, as the French do. The English may smell bad, but at least they don’t kill whales and use the blubber to make perfume to cover their body’s bad smell as the French did back then – because they believed bathing was unhealthy. (I will admit, under torture by the Spanish inquisition, that I am indeed a third French. That explains some of the stink from this story).
The French, in their usual haughty way, verbally taunted the tired, wet and starving Englishmen, who had just slogged their way through 250 miles of French countryside before the battle. They were especially cursing the famed English longbow archers.
The English longbow was a devastating military force from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. It was this weapon, which conquered Wales and Scotland, which gave the English their victories in the Hundred Years War, and permitted England to replace France as the foremost military power in Medieval Europe. The longbow was the machine gun of the middle ages: accurate, deadly, possessed of a long-range and rapid rate of fire of 10 to 12 arrows per minute, the flight of its missiles was likened to a storm. Cheap and simple enough for the yeoman to own and master, it made him superior to a knight on the field of battle. The longbow was up to six feet long in its firing position, while the longbow men’s’ averaged height was only 5’2" tall. The finest bows were made from yew trees.
What the French Knights were yelling was that the next day, when they had crushed the English army, they would cut off the two fingers the longbow men used to pull the bowstring back, so they would never again be able to use that weapon against them. Of course that was the least they would do to the longbow men, if they hadn’t already cut off their heads, or their entire hands.
The French had amassed 25,000 knights, infantry and archers to fight Henry V’s army of only 5,000. This looked like a recipe for enormous catastrophe to the English. It wasn’t a question of how many would die, but of how many would remain alive.
The next day, on those fields of Agincourt, the French suffered their greatest loss and the English achieved their greatest victory. Between seven and ten thousand French men died, compared to less than 100 English deaths.
Much of the victory could be claimed by the superiority of those English longbow men. As a defiant sign to the defeated French, the longbow men would raise those two fingers – the same two they used to pull the bowstring – at them to show they still had them to fight with. They could indeed still pluck yew.
So the next time someone challenges your ability to win no matter the odds, proudly raise your two fingers at your opponent and say, "Pluck Yew."
