In Bernard Cornwells 'Heretic' (book three of the grail quest series) Cornwell mentions a tradition among Archers wherein they would ceremonially burn their old long bows. Is there truth in this?

by gassyboi

When the Archers long bows were in need of replacing, the original would be burnt in a tradition that would signify sending the bow to hell, where it would wait for the arrival of the archer. Circa 100 years war.

Valkine

I have literally never heard of this before so I'd be extremely dubious of any claims that it actually happened. There's certainly no mention of it in Jim Bradbury's book The Medieval Archer.

Our actual insight into the day to day activities of medieval archers is pretty limited, we mostly know what they were up to while on campaigns and even then only as background players to the major chronicle figures. The best primary source work on medieval archery is Roger Ascham's Toxophilus. It's a very thorough discussion of the practices of archery but it was written in 1545 so it's not exactly contemporary to the Hundred Years War. I don't think Ascham makes any mention of burning old bows but I can't say I've completely scoured the text, it's written in fairly archaic English which makes it a difficult read it's not exactly a thrilling book to begin with.

I can't say with 100% certainty that they didn't do it because we know so little about the average person during the Middle Ages but so far as I know there is no evidence to support that claim either.