![]() As a result, there is a tendency to shy away from discussing it in detail. Peter Opie interviewed children in the 1950s and observed in The Lore And Language Of Schoolchildren that the much older thumbing of the nose (cock-a-snook) had been replaced by the V-sign as the most common insulting gesture used in the playground.ĭesmond Morris discussed various possible origins of the V sign in Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, (published 1979) and came to no definite conclusion:īecause of the strong taboo associated with the gesture (its public use has often been heavily penalized). It was not until the start of the 20th century that clear evidence of the use of insulting V sign in England became available, when in 1901 a worker outside Parkgate ironworks in Rotherham used the gesture, (captured on the film), to indicate he did not like being filmed. The first definitive known reference to the ‘V-sign’ in French is in the works of François Rabelais, a sixteenth-century satirist. If this is correct it confirms that the story was around at the time of Agincourt, although it doesn't necessarily mean that the French practised it, just that Henry found it useful for propaganda, and it does not show that the 'two-fingers salute' is derived from the hypothetical behaviour of English archers at that battle. Historian Juliet Barker quotes Jean Le Fevre (who fought on the English side at Agincourt) as saying that Henry V included a reference to the French cutting off longbowmen's fingers in his pre-battle speech. But the English came out victorious and showed off their two fingers, still intact. The story claims that the French claimed that they would cut off the arrow-shooting fingers of all the English and Welsh longbowmen after they had won the battle at Agincourt. Thus a three fingered draw in which the middle finger does very little work.Īn early recorded use of the 'two-fingered salute' is in the Macclesfield Psalter of c.1330 (in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), being made by a glove in the Psalter’s marginalia.Īccording to a popular legend the two-fingers salute and/or V sign derives from the gestures of longbowmen fighting in the English army at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War. "And when a man shooteth, the might of his shoot liest on the foremost finger, and on the ringman: for the middle finger which is longest, like a lubber, starteth back, and beareth no weight of the string in a manner at all" Having thought about my first statement regarding Ascham I decided to dust off my copy of the book and see if my memory was correct so I edited this response and added the following:Īscham, in Toxophilus book 11 page 101 in the 1990 Simon Archery edition, says: Legend tells us of the two fingered draw and the two fingered salute to the French after victory to show that the shooting fingers are still intact. Doesn't Ascham talk of the use of three fingers? Also didn't the various French laws concerning the removal of captured English Archer's fingers variously talk of two or three? Could of course be wrong on both accounts but have dredged them up from the old memory. I believe both a three fingered and a two fingered draw were used.
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