CHAPTER XII
THE ARCHERS: GAMES PLAYED IN BELGIUM
Let us imagine we are taking a walk along some country road in Flanders on a summer afternoon. There is a cinder-track for cyclists on one side, and the lines of a district railway on the other. The road between them is causeway, very hard, dusty, and hot to walk on. But we can step on to the railway, and walk between the rails, or take to the cycle-track. If a train comes up behind, the engine-driver will whistle to give us warning, but we must keep a sharp lookout for cyclists, who seldom ring their bells, but rush swiftly and silently past, and perhaps shout something rude to us for being on their track. There are no fences or hedges, but a straggling row of tall poplar-trees on each side of the road, and beyond them square fields of rye or pasturage divided by ditches of stagnant water.
It will not be long before we come to a village, a row of white cottages with roofs of red tiles, and outside window-shutters painted green. In front of each cottage there is a pathway of rough stones, and a gutter full of dirty water. There are about fifty of these cottages, of which half a dozen or so have signboards with Herberg, which means public-house, over their doors. The railway passes close in front of them. A little way back from the road there is a church, with a clock-tower, and a snug-looking house, standing in a garden, where the parish priest lives.
Just outside the village we notice a meadow, in which there is a wooden shed open at one side, with benches in it, and reminding us of the little pavilions we often see on village cricket-grounds in England. The part of the meadow just in front of this shed is covered with cinders or gravel, in the middle of which rises a very high pole, tapering towards the top, and looking like a gigantic fishing-rod stuck in the ground. It is crossed, a long way up, by slender spars, like the yards of a ship, only they are no thicker than a walking-stick. On these spars, and along the pole itself near the top, a number of little wooden pegs, with tufts of yellow worsted attached to them, are fixed. One bigger than the rest is perched on the very summit of the pole, which bends over slightly to one side. They look like toy canaries, but are called "pigeons," and they are put there as marks to be shot at with bows and arrows.
Presently a number of men come from the village, each with a long-bow and some arrows. It is a holiday, and the local Society of Archers is going to spend the afternoon shooting for prizes. One of them takes his stand close to the foot of the pole, fits an arrow on his bowstring, aims steadily, and shoots straight up. It needs a good deal of strength, as the bow is stiff to bend. The arrow flies whistling among the "birds," touches one or two without bringing them down, rises high above the top of the pole, turns in the air, and comes down again to the ground with a thud. It is the duty of two or three boys to pick up the arrows, and bring them back to the shooters. The arrows are blunt, but to protect their heads these boys wear hats with thick flat crowns and very broad brims, which make them look like big mushrooms with legs as they run about to fetch the arrows.
When a bird is hit fair and square it comes down, and the shot is cheered. Sometimes shot after shot is fired, and nothing falls, especially if there is a wind. But the interest never flags, and the shooting goes on for hours. There is a great deal of talking and laughing, much beer is drunk in the pavilion, and the fun only ends when the light fails.
This is the great national sport of Belgium. There is scarcely a town or village which has not a Society of Archers, called generally after St. Sebastian, the patron saint of archers. Many of them were founded 600 years ago, at the time when the famous archers of England were showing how well they could hold their own with the bow against knights clad in heavy armour. In 1303 a society called the Confraternity of the Archers of St. Sebastian was founded at Ypres, a town in Flanders, to celebrate a great battle, the Battle of the Golden Spurs, in which the Flemings had been victorious over the French the year before, and this society still exists. The chief Society of Archers in Brabant in the old days was at Louvain, and it was founded just three years before that Battle of Cressy of which you have so often heard, when, as the old chronicler Froissart says, the English arrows flew so thick that it seemed to snow.
Thus the history of this national sport goes back to the time when arrows were used in battle, and men had to practise constantly with their bows in order to be able to defend their country or attack their enemies. But when the use of firearms became universal, and archers were no longer employed in warfare, the societies still continued to exist, and their meetings gradually became what they now are—social gatherings for the practice of archery as a form of sport.