Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured soldiers.
Without the middle finger it would be impossible for the English soldiers to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore incapable of fighting in the future.
The famous bow was made of the English Yew tree and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew" or "pluck you".
Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won the battle and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French and saying "We can still pluck yew. Pluck you".
3 comments:
I dissent:
http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/pluckyew.asp
I thought it was more hysterical than historical.
You made me look up comparisons between English longbows and medieval crossbows. Turns out it takes real skill and strength to fire a longbow, while any numbskull can fire a crossbow. But longbows have a much higher rate of fire. You need a horse or a windlass to crank back the string on a crossbow before firing, while a mighty archer can pull his own longbow string and fire up to 6 arrows per minute. So PLUCK YEW!
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