This fearful encounter and the death of their champion was looked upon as a bad omen by the English, and Sir Walter Scott thus describes it: 

The heart had hardly time to think,
The eyelid scarce had time to wink,

* * * * *

High in his stirrups stood the King,
And gave his battle-axe the swing;
Right on De Boune, the whiles he pass’d,
Fell that stern dint—­the first—­the last!—­
Such strength upon the blow was put,
The helmet crash’d like hazel-nut;
The axe shaft, with its brazen clasp,
Was shiver’d to the gauntlet grasp. 
Springs from the blow the startled horse,
Drops to the plain the lifeless corse.

The battle began on the following morning, Midsummer Day, and the mighty host of heavily armed men on large horses moved forward along what they thought was hard road, only to fall into the concealed pits carefully prepared beforehand by Bruce and to sink in the bogs over which they had to pass.  It can easily be imagined that those behind pressing forward would ride over those who had sunk already, only to sink themselves in turn.  Thousands perished in that way, and many a thrown rider, heavily laden with armour, fell an easy prey to the hardy Scots.  The result was disastrous to the English, and it was said that 30,000 of them were killed, while the Scots were able afterwards to raid the borders of England almost to the gates of York.

The surgeon said that in the Royal College of Surgeons in London a rib of Bruce, the great Scottish king, was included in the curios of the college, together with a bit of the cancerous growth which killed Napoleon.  It was said that Bruce’s rib was injured in a jousting match in England many years before he died, and that the fracture was made good by a first-class surgeon of the time.  In 1329 Bruce died of leprosy in his fifty fifth year and the twenty-third of his reign, and was buried in the Abbey Church of Dunfermline.  In clearing the foundation for the third church on the same site, in 1818, the bones of the hero were discovered, Sir Walter Scott being present.  The breastbone of the skeleton had been sawn through some 500 years before, as was customary, in order to allow of the removal of the heart, which was then embalmed, and given to Bruce’s friend, Sir James Douglas, to be carried to Palestine and buried in Jerusalem.

The surgeon also told us—­in order, we supposed, to cheer our drooping spirits—­of another battle fought in the neighbourhood of Bannockburn in 1488, but this time it was the Scottish King James III who came to grief.  He had a fine grey courser given him “that could war all the horse of Scotland if the king could sit up well.”  But he was a coward and could not ride, and when some men came up shouting and throwing arrows, they frightened the king.  Feeling the spurs, the horse went at “flight speed” through Bannockburn, and a woman carrying