It was perseverance, not patience, that King Robert I is reputed to have learned from watching a spider.

The legend (with variations) is that, tired and dispirited from an unsuccessful battle against the invading English, he took refuge in a cave. As he lay recovering and wondering if he should just give up the fight, he noticed a spider building a web nearby. Before the spider could complete the web he reached up and broke the web. Undaunted, the spider simply started building the web again but each time, before it could finish it, King Robert would break the web. This sequence of events was repeated several times with the spider never being allowed to complete the task. Eventually, however, the King fell asleep – and when he awoke, there above him was the completed spider’s web. The spider had beaten him by sheer perseverance. He took the lesson to heart and applied it to his war against the English invaders, eventually winning the final victory at Bannockburn, near Stirling, in the year 1314 (700 years ago this year).