And in the meantime the plot of "The Bowmen"
occurred to me. Now it has been murmured and hinted and suggested and
whispered in all sorts of quarters that before I wrote the tale I had
heard something. The most decorative of these legends is also the most
precise: "I know for a fact that the whole thing was given him in
typescript by a lady-in-waiting." This was not the case; and all
vaguer reports to the effect that I had heard some rumours or hints of
rumours are equally void of any trace of truth.
Again I apologise for entering so pompously into the minutiae of my bit
of a story, as if it were the lost poems of Sappho; but it appears
that the subject interests the public, and I comply with my
instructions. I take it, then, that the origins of "The Bowmen" were
composite. First of all, all ages and nations have cherished the
thought that spiritual hosts may come to the help of earthly arms,
that gods and heroes and saints have descended from their high
immortal places to fight for their worshippers and clients. Then
Kipling's story of the ghostly Indian regiment got in my head and got
mixed with the mediaevalism that is always there; and so "The Bowmen"
was written.
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