Another variant--this, I think,
never got into print--told how dead Prussians had been found on the
battlefield with arrow wounds in their bodies. This notion amused me,
as I had imagined a scene, when I was thinking out the story, in which
a German general was to appear before the Kaiser to explain his
failure to annihilate the English.
"All-Highest," the general was to say, "it is true, it is impossible
to deny it. The men were killed by arrows; the shafts were found in
their bodies by the burying parties."
I rejected the idea as over-precipitous even for a mere fantasy. I was
therefore entertained when I found that what I had refused as too
fantastical for fantasy was accepted in certain occult circles as hard
fact.
Other versions of the story appeared in which a cloud interposed
between the attacking Germans and the defending British. In some
examples the cloud served to conceal our men from the advancing enemy;
in others, it disclosed shining shapes which frightened the horses of
the pursuing German cavalry. St. George, it will he noted, has
disappeared--he persisted some time longer in certain Roman Catholic
variants--and there are no more bowmen, no more arrows.
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