Guiding Light

As King Robert the Bruce lay dying in 1329 he asked Sir James Douglas to take his heart on crusade against the enemies of Christ. Douglas carried Bruce’s heart into battle against the Moors in Spain before it was returned to Scotland and finally buried at Melrose Abbey. In the 1990s a team from Historic Scotland investigated a lead casket containing an embalmed heart found at Melrose Abbey. A stone plaque bearing the words ‘A noble hart may have nane ease gif freedom failye’ marks the spot where the heart was reburied. The Bruce’s Heart, no greater and no less Than any other man’s, can still express Brave heart, the common mortal’s will to fight When freedom is suppressed by tyrant’s might And still, across the world, wrong smothers right Beats down the poor, the refugee, the slight And feeble women, shot because they seek For education, denied to the meek By powerful bigots and misguided laws Lacking a guiding light to plead their cause