THE STORY OF TIG: How Tig got his First Bow and Arrows

WHEN first Tig and his friends played at hunting, they mostly had bows and arrows of their own making. Tig had made his own bow, but it was not a good one. He made it of a hazel sapling which was not a very tough piece of wood, and not well balanced, as one end was thicker than the other. His bowstring was one that his father had thrown away, and it was old and frayed.

But one day Garff was sitting outside the hut shaping a shaft for a spear with his flint knife, and he saw Tig trying to shoot with his weak little bow. So he called him, and said: “Bring it hither to me, little son. It is a poor thing, this bow of thine. One of these days we must make thee a better.”

And Tig said: “Make it now, Dad.”

So Garff laid aside his spear, and he went into the hut and brought out several lengths of wood from his store, and he looked them over carefully. He chose one—a piece of a tough ash sapling, about four feet long. Then he set to work to whittle this with his knife until he had shaped it to the right form—thickest in the middle and tapering towards the ends, rounded in front and flattened at the back; and he scraped it smooth all over. Then he worked some notches at each end, using for this a little saw made of flint; and he fitted a new bowstring to it, and gave Tig his first real bow. Of course this was not done all in a day, but Garff worked at it between whiles when he had time.

And he made the arrows, too, taking from his stock of arrow-sticks six of the shorter ones. These he trimmed and scraped, and made a deep notch at the top of each, to take the bow-string. Then at the tip he made a deep cut, lengthwise, with the saw, and fitted in a bit of the leg bone of a deer, shaped and pointed. Then he cut a very fine strip of fresh hide and bound it around the base of the bone point; and afterwards laid the arrows one by one in the sun, so that the hide might dry and shrink, and hold the arrow-head tight in its place.

And Garff took some wing-feathers of a wild goose and split them; and to each of the arrows he bound three strips of the feathers a little below the notch, to make them fly straight. And he made a quiver of birch bark, bound with bands of hide, for Tig to carry his arrows in. And he cut a mark upon the quiver, and the same mark on each of the arrows, so that Tig might always know his own; and he told him to be very careful about his arrows, not to waste them on chance shots, and always to recover them after shooting, if possible.

None of the boys had a better outfit than Tig’s. Among them they made a target out of an old skin, stuffed with dry grass, and practised shooting at it. The men taught them how to aim, standing sideways, on to the target, with feet well apart, firmly set, and to draw the bow by hooking the first two fingers of the right hand into the bowstring, not by pinching the arrow between thumb and finger. Every boy in the village wanted to practise and become a good marksman. The boys who could shoot well and run well were always thought much of; and sometimes they were allowed to go hunting with the men.