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Updated: May 26, 2025
We have seen that Highlander and Islesman fought under David I at the battle of the Standard, against the "Saxons farther off", and that although the death of Comyn ranged against Bruce the Highlanders of Argyll, numbers of Highlanders were led to victory at Bannockburn by Earl Randolph; and Angus Og and the Islesmen formed part of the Scottish reserves and stood side by side with the men of Carrick, under the leadership of King Robert.
Ben Lomond, a mountain rising to a height of more than three thousand feet, stands on the shore, and it is said that Robert Bruce, the hero of Bannockburn, once hid himself in a cave in this mountain. A pleasant boat-ride down the lake brought me back to Glasgow in time to attend a meeting of the brethren in Coplaw Street that night.
When this was uttered by the English herald, Bruce turned to Ruthven with an heroic smile: "Let him come, my brave barons, and he shall find that Bannockburn shall page with Cambus-Kenneth!" The strength of the Scottish army did not amount to more than thirty thousand men against this host of Southrons. But the relics of Wallace were there! His spirit glowed in the heart of Bruce.
He had succeeded to the principality not without a protracted struggle with the Red Earl some twenty years before the date of the battle of Bannockburn. Endued with an intensely national spirit, he seems to have fully adopted the views of Nicholas McMaelisa, the Primate of Armagh, his early cotemporary.
Patriotism stands once more in the breach at Thermopylae, bears down the serried hosts of Bannockburn, lays its calm hand in the fire, still, as if it felt the pressure of a mother's lips, gathers to its heart the points of opposing spears, to make a way for the avenging feet behind. All that the ages have of greatness and glory your hand may pluck, and every year adds to the purple vintage.
When the Scottish army was drawn up, the line stretched north and south. On the south, it was terminated by the banks of the brook called Bannockburn, which are so rocky, that no troops could attack them there. On the left, the Scottish line extended near to the town of Stirling. Bruce reviewed his troops very carefully.
The contest ... was none of this; it was a contest between foes, of whom their contemporaries would have said that their ever being in harmony with each other, or having a feeling of common interests and common nationality, was not within the range of rational expectations.... It will be difficult to make those not familiar with the tone of feeling in Lowland Scotland at that time believe that the defeat of Donald of the Isles was felt as a more memorable deliverance even than that of Bannockburn."
At Ellerton, on the other side of the river a little lower down, the nunnery was of the Cistercian Order; for, although very little of its history has been discovered, Leland writes of the house as 'a Priori of White clothid Nunnes. After the Battle of Bannockburn, when the Scots raided all over the North Riding of Yorkshire, they came along Swaledale in search of plunder, and we are told that Ellerton suffered from their violence.
The attempt of Edward Bruce was a failure, and was followed by many disasters; but a more patriotic design, or one with fairer omens of success, could not have entered the mind or heart of a native Prince, after the event of the battle at Bannockburn.
For centuries to come the rich plunder of the English camp left its traces on the treasure-rolls and the vestment-rolls of castle and abbey throughout the Lowlands. Bannockburn left Bruce the master of Scotland: but terrible as the blow was England could not humble herself to relinquish her claim on the Scottish crown.
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