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The idea of any Welsh (or English) longbow before the 14th century has no basis in fact; despite many clumsy attempts to fabricate historical evidence where none exists.

The Old Welsh word bwa means simply "a bow", as does the Latin arcus, the Anglo-Norman arc and the Early Middle English word boue. These are the only words used to describe bows in Wales and England up to the late 13th century and not one of them means "longbow"; no actual examples of bows from the early period exist; no descriptions of the size of bows from that era exist and the theory that all bows must be longbows is total nonsense.

The Welsh were certainly using longbows later in the medieval period, when English archers were also using them.

All that we can say with certainty is that the bow (in some form) was being used in both Wales and England in the period 1066 to 1250 and that after that date (at some unknown time) longbows were being used by both Welsh and English archers.

Without some new, unfabricated evidence from the period we can not know any more than that.

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14y ago

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