"Giving the finger" "The universal good luck sign." This most well known of gestures has its, er "roots" in military history. Just before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, French knights, anticipating victory over the lowly English peasants, announced their intention to cut off the middle finger of all captured English yeoman. The planned battlefield amputation would assure that the English were incapable of fighting in the future since without a middle finger it would be impossible for the men to draw the renowned English Longbow (actually a Welsh invention - DWT). Assyrian bowmen waggled their thumbs as seen in the above. The longbow was made of the native English Yew tree and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew" (or to "pluck yew"). Much to the bewilderment of the French, it was the English who won the engagement in a classic lopsided upset not equaled until Desert Storm. The bowmen, in the adrenaline rush of triumph, mocked the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, shouting, "We can still pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!" Over the years some 'folk etymologies' have grown up around this symbolic gesture. Since "pluck yew" is rather difficult to say (like "pleasant mother pheasant plucker", which is who you had to go to for the feathers used on the arrows for the longbow), the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'F', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter.It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird." And yew all thought yew knew everything... Back to Cry Havoc #22 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com