Q: What Kinds of Bows did the Peoples Near Mirkwood Use?
ANSWER: Tolkien wrote very little about the exact materials and designs of the bows used in Middle-earth. But he did provide a few details. For example, near the end of Chapter 6 in The Hobbit we find the following passage:
The Lord of the Eagles would not take them anywhere near where men lived. “They would shoot at us with their great bows of yew,” he said, “for they would think we were after their sheep. And at other times they would be right. No! we are glad to cheat the goblins of their sport, and glad to repay our thanks to you, but we will not risk ourselves for dwarves in the southward plains.”
We encounter another “great yew bow” in Chapter 14, where Bard faces Smaug in battle:
…Their captain was Bard, grim-voiced and grim-faced, whose friends had accused him of prophesying floods and poisoned fish, though they knew his worth and courage. He was a descendant in long line of Girion, Lord of Dale, whose wife and child had escaped down the Running River from the ruin long ago. Now he shot with a great yew bow, till all his arrows but one were spent. The flames were near him. His companions were leaving him. He bent his bow for the last time. Suddenly out of the dark something fluttered to his shoulder. He started-but it was only an old thrush. Unafraid it perched by his ear and it brought him news. Marvelling he found he could understand its tongue, for he was of the race of Dale.
Other references to bows in the story include no description. Maybe the bows Beorn gave to Thorin and Company were man-sized, if only because there is no reason to assume that he would have kept under-sized bows around just in case Dwarves came by.
…To Legolas she gave a bow such as the Galadhrim used, longer and stouter than the bows of Mirkwood, and strung with a string of elf-hair. With it went a quiver of arrows.
I have seen some speculation from people about whether elf-bows could be kept strung for long periods of time. Tolkien wrote the following for the passage where the Fellowship encounter their first flying Black Rider:
Legolas laid down his paddle and took up the bow that he had brought from Lórien. Then he sprang ashore and climbed a few paces up the bank. Stringing the bow and fitting an arrow he turned, peering back over the River into the darkness. Across the water there were shrill cries, but nothing could be seen.
Later on the story Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli examine four dead Uruk-hai whom Boromir had slain at Parth Galen:
There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands. They were armed with short broad-bladed swords, not with the curved scimitars usual with Orcs: and they had bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of Men. Upon their shields they bore a strange device: a small white hand in the centre of a black field; on the front of their iron helms was set an S-rune, wrought of some white metal.
But though these bows are all described as “great”, they may have only been mid-sized compared to the bows used by Faramir’s rangers in Ithilien, for of these Tolkien wrote (in “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”):
If they were astonished at what they saw, their captors were even more astonished. Four tall Men stood there. Two had spears in their hands with broad bright heads. Two had great bows, almost of their own height, and great quivers of long green-feathered arrows. All had swords at their sides, and were clad in green and brown of varied hues, as if the better to walk unseen in the glades of Ithilien. Green gauntlets covered their hands, and their faces were hooded and masked with green, except for their eyes, which were very keen and bright. At once Frodo thought of Boromir, for these Men were like him in stature and bearing, and in their manner of speech.
The only description of bows provided in The Silmarillion is the brief “slender bows” of the Teleri of Alqualonde. In “Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin” (published in Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth) Tolkien mentioned 300 archers with “long bows” guarding the Golden Gate (the seventh and last of the gates of Gondolin). The steel bows of the Numenoreans also spark interest among Tolkien’s readers. These weapons are mentioned in the essay “A Description of the Island of Numenor” (Unfinished Tales):
Some metals they found in Númenor, and as their cunning in mining and in smelting and smithying swiftly grew things of iron and copper became common. Among the wrights of the Edain were weaponsmiths, and they had with the teaching of the Noldor acquired great skill in the forging of swords, of axe-blades, and of spearheads and knives. Swords the Guild of Weapon-smiths still made, for the preservation of the craft, though most of their labour was spent on the fashioning of tools for the uses of peace. The King and most of the great chieftains possessed swords as heirlooms of their fathers; 2 and at times they would still give a sword as a gift to their heirs. A new sword was made for the King’s Heir to be given to him on the day on which this title was conferred. But no man wore a sword in Númenor, and for long years few indeed were the weapons of warlike intent that were made in the land. Axes and spears and bows they had, and shooting with bows on foot and on horseback was a chief sport and pastime of the Númenóreans. In later days, in the wars upon Middle-earth, it was the bows of the Númenóreans that were most greatly feared. “The Men of the Sea,” it was said, “send before them a great cloud, as a rain turned to ser-pents, or a black hail tipped with steel;” and in those days the great cohorts of the King’s Archers used bows made of hollow steel, with black-feathered arrows a full ell long from point to notch.
The steelbows also mentioned in “The Disaster of the Gladden Fields”:
But he was mistaken. There was not only cunning in the attack, but fierce and relentless hatred. The Orcs of the Mountains were stiffened and commanded by grim servants of Barad-dûr, sent out long before to watch the passes, and though it was unknown to them the Ring, cut from his black hand two years before, was still laden with Sauron’s evil will and called to all his servants for their aid. The Dúnedain had gone scarcely a mile when the Orcs moved again. This time they did not charge, but used all their forces. They came down on a wide front, which bent into a crescent and soon closed into an unbroken ring about the Dúnedain. They were silent now, and kept at a distance out of the range of the dreaded steelbows of Númenor, though the light was fast failing, and Isildur had all too few archers for his need. He halted.
Beleg Strongbow was also said to have carried a “great bow” and a “long bow” (named Belthronding), which in The Children of Hurin was said to be made of “black yew-wood”.
Although they can grow for centuries, Yew trees don’t yield much wood suitable for bow-making. So many yew trees were cut down for bow-making in medieval England that the wood had to be imported from continental Europe, and then local rulers might protect their forests from depletion due to the high demand for the wood. Longbows made of yew were superior to similar-sized bows made of other woods, and shorter recurved bows were often used by peoples who could not make yew bows. Tolkien does not mention recurved wooden bows in his stories and the reader may infer that Tolkien himself was more familiar with the English longbow by reputation than other bows. Other woods used for bows include Ash, Elm, Hickory, and Pine.
In addition to bows, yew wood was also used to make lutes (according to luthier Robert Lundberg). The great Persian philosopher/doctor/scientist Avicenna (11th century CE) made a drug from yew he named “Zanab” to treat heart conditions. Yew is also used in the Himalayas to treat ovarian cancer, although I think it doubtful that Tolkien would have known about this. His rare use of the word yew in his stories does suggest that he understood its high value but he does not incorporate yew into anything other than “great bows” and “long bows”.
As far as the peoples living in or near Mirkwood were concerned, I suspect that Tolkien meant for the reader to infer that they used different types of bows and that great yew longbows were probably rare among them. The Elves of Lothlorien need not have made all their longbows from yew trees but apparently Tolkien envisioned yews dominating the forests of the vales of Anduin when he wrote both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Because he does not mention competition for yew wood or depletion of yew resources we can infer that he was either unaware of yew’s historical economic significance (which I think unlikely) or that he imagined its use was limited to elite archers in Middle-earth.
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There is another reference to bow, curiously this time connected with the dwarves. Thorin apparently found in armouries of Erebor, a bow of horn:
“Then Thorin seized a bow of horn and shot an arrow at the speaker. It smote into his shield and stuck there quivering.”
Possibly this ‘bow of horn’ is a weapon suited for dwarves and made by them.
Good point! Thank you for mentioning that.
Bow of horn often refers to a composite bow in historical writing. Composite bows of horn wood and sinew would make sense for dwarves due to the great power but compact nature.
There have definitely been horn bows. What Tolkien meant? Who knows, he really might have meant composite bows.
Also, it’s a misconception propagated by those who romanticize the English Longbow that yew is a superior wood. It’s not. The performance of a bow depends on design, and bow wood dictates the dimensions. Yew also had disadvantages, among them its softness. The wood itself is simply not hard. Hickory is a New World wood and would likely have been preferred by bowyers. Native Americans certainly enjoyed it.
To argue that people had to resort to shorter, recurved bows because yew wasn’t available is not historical. One cannot make that statement.
“To argue that people had to resort to shorter, recurved bows because yew wasn’t available is not historical. One cannot make that statement.”
And it’s a good thing I did not make such a statement (what I wrote was “shorter recurved bows were often used by peoples who could not make yew bows”, which is quite a different thing).
Yew bows were preferred by ancient and medieval peoples who could make them, however, and English yew bows were famous across Europe. That they could get so little good bow wood from a yew tree agrees with your statement about the softness of the wood, but those who lived and died by these kinds of weapons for centuries definitely preferred yew.
With fewer than ten known examples of medieval yew bows still in existence, there is not much opportunity for testing how well they compared to other bows of those times.
Happily a whole lot of yew bows were salvaged from the Mary Rose, a Tudor warship that was brought to the surface in 1982. This article gives some detail.
http://www.archers-review.com/magazine-articles/june-2010-longbows-of-the-mary-rose
Fascinating article. I had not heard of the Mary Rose (certainly not of the bows). Thanks for mentioning it.