Introduction
Robert I of Scotland forced England to recognise Scottish independence in 1328. But back in 1307, King Edward I had responded to news of Robert’s coronation by seizing his estates, kidnapping his Queen and murdering his brother. Robert fled to the remote isles, and according to a popular folktale his fate hung almost literally by a spider’s thread.
DOUBTFUL of what he should do, Bruce was looking upward to the roof of the cabin in which he lay;* and his eye was attracted by a spider, which, hanging at the end of a long thread of its own spinning, was endeavouring to swing itself from one beam in the roof to another, for the purpose of fixing the line on which it meant to stretch its web.
The insect made the attempt again and again without success; and at length Bruce counted that it had tried to carry its point six times, and been as often unable to do so. It came into his head that he had himself fought just six battles against the English and their allies, and that the poor persevering spider was exactly in the same situation with himself, having made as many trials, and been as often disappointed in what it aimed at.
“Now,” thought Bruce, “as I have no means of knowing what is best to be done, I will be guided by the luck which shall attend this spider.
Scott places him on Rathlin Island, off the northern coast of Northern Ireland. This was not his only refuge during this time; a fourteenth-century source says he was also helped by Christina of the Isles, who sheltered him in the western Highlands.