The Bowmen on the Battlefield

The Weekly Machen

According to Goldstone and Sweetser, the following article was written by Arthur Machen, who went uncredited (page 105). This researcher has his doubts, yet I have chosen to include it in The Weekly Machen series. It is useful since it outlines a brief synopsis of the controversial story, as well as an excellent summary of events which contributed to the growth of the legend. In the following weeks, we will explore the ongoing furor and Machen’s responses.

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“The Bowmen” on the Battlefield:
A Rival to the Great Russian Fable
by
Unsigned
May 3, 1915

“The Evening News” has to relate to-day one of the most astonishing stories the war.

It is as strange in its own way as the myth of the Russian army that hundreds of thousands of people believed to have passed through England in railway carriages with carefully drawn blinds.

The myth of “The Bowmen” began in The Evening News as a tale of the war by Mr. Arthur Machen. It appeared in the second week of September.

It was written as a tale. It was frank fiction. It did not pretend to be a narrative of anything that has occurred on the battlefield. There was no more reason for taking it to be descriptive of an actual experience than there is for regarding “The Great God Pan,” or any other of Mr. Machen’s famous stories as a string of plain facts that any lawyer would put into an affidavit.

Yet to-day that fantasy which was written in an afternoon by Mr. Machen as a contribution to “The Evening News”— the tale of a wholly imagined and imaginary incident which befell a portion of the British troops during the retreat from Mons—is told among soldiers and stay-at-homes as a true and beautiful episode.

The fantasy has been taken out of Mr. Machen’s hands. There are occultists and people with a passion for the spiritual and romantic who will not believe, and never will believe, that the tale never happened; and it will go round and round the world and remain permanently in the chronicles of the occult.

Mr. Machen, who wrote a very incisive and humorous speculation on the origin of the Russian fable is now in a position to talk as a first hand authority on myths and how they grow.

After Mons

Now for the tale of “The Bowmen.” It dealt, as was said, with the retreat of British troops from Mons.

A thousand of these troops are supposed in the story to be occupying a vital position.

If they are overwhelmed, then the whole British Army will be overwhelmed, the Allied left will be turned, Sedan will follow. Our men see that the situation is hopeless. Their guns are outclassed and are being knocked into scrap iron; the German cannonade is tearing them to pieces; it grows awful in its fury of destruction. The thousand are reduced to five hundred; and under cover of the shell-fire ten thousand Germans are moving against them. They shoot on as if they were at Bisley; but they know that everything, save death, is over.

Now, one of these soldiers had been once or twice to a well-known vegetarian restaurant in St. Martin’s-lane. In this restaurant the plates have a figure of St. George stamped on them, with the prayer, “Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius.” The soldier, half consciously, uttered these words—May St. George come to the help of the English. Instantly he felt a shock, he heard a great voice pealing out, “Array, array, array,” and, to cut a great short story shorter, St. George and the Bowmen of Agincourt came to the help of the English. Below the flight of those spiritual arrows, which the good soldier could alone see, the enemy perished utterly. There were no wounds on their bodies, and the German Staff said it was a case of noxious gases.

So much for the story.

The Clergy Interested

Within a week Mr. Machen received a letter a gentleman eminent in occult journalism who said, in effect, “Of course it’s all true. If you will give me your exact authorities I should very much like to reprint it in my paper.”

Mr. Machen’s oldest literary friend said: “I felt pretty sure you had some foundation for that story of yours.” Then another “occult” editor wrote in the manner of a believer who wanted but one word to be convinced.

The clergy grew interested and reprinted the tale in parish magazines. Then The Evening News learned it was being talked of in military circles.

An officer called and asked how much was true and how much was fiction.

A clergyman wished to reprint “The Bowmen” as a pamphlet, and asked Mr. Machen for a short preface giving his authorities. Mr. Machen wrote that he had made up the whole tale. The clergyman wrote back to say that Mr. Machen was mistaken.

“A Row of Shining Beings”

Now the editor of Light has been visited by an officer who declares that whether Mr. Machen invented “The Bowmen” or not it was “certainly stated in some quarters” that “a strange cloud” had interposed between the British and the Germans. And The Weekly Dispatch of a week or two ago gave the story of an officer to whom St. George had appeared—St. George just as he is pictured in a certain London restaurant; whereupon the officer invoked the saint. This was given on the authority of the “Higher Thought Centre.” And in the May issue of the Occult Review, Mr. A. P. Sinnett, a Theosophist of very long standing, says that there was an intervention of spiritual beings during the retreat from Mons. “These who could see,” he declares, “said they saw row of shining beings” between the two armies.”

Finally, another eminent occultist understands that dead Germans with arrow wounds were found on the battlefield.

Still more finally, Mr. Machen says once for all that “The Bowmen” was simply his own invention. It was not founded on any rumours of any sort.

He is strengthened in his impression that all the rumours were founded upon his tale by the circumstance of the “Higher Thought” version bringing in the restaurant, and also by Mr. Sinnett’s “row of shining beings.” Mr. Machen wrote in the tale, “A long line of shapes, with a shining about them.”

Such is the strange story of “The Bowmen.”

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The Weekly

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Next: Great Demand for “The Bowmen” Story 

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