Robert the Bruce’s rallied his troops in the shade of a yew
This very stunted and forlorn-looking tree stands in a private garden next to a white cottage at Stuc an T’iobhairt, overlooking Loch Lomond between Inverbeg and Tarbet.
Sadly, it is a shadow of its former self, and noted not so much for its stature, but indeed thanks to a link with Scotland’s national hero, Robert the Bruce (12741329). It is so famous that it is one of very few individual trees in Scotland to be on the Ordnance Survey map.
Bruce united the Scottish people against the English and re-established a fully independent Scotland, but eight years prior to becoming King of Scotland, in 1306, he was forced to escape across Loch Lomond from defeats in two ferocious battles, and take shelter under an ancient yew tree.
His adversaries, led by the Earl of Pembroke and Macdougall of Lorne, were seeking revenge for the death of John Comyn, a former ally of Bruce, who in 1304 moved his allegiance over to Edward – this was viewed as an act of treachery and as a result Bruce killed him.
It is said that Bruce’s crestfallen army traversed Loch Lomond and eventually found shelter under the ancient yew tree at Stuc an T’iobhairt (meaning the Hill of the Sacrifice), where Bruce rallied his lowspirited men.
On their arrival, Bruce stood under the tree raising their spirits. He used the yew to symbolise their struggle, heartily praising its strength and remarkable ability to endure.
Eight years later, the fortunes of Bruce and his army changed when they won the famous battle at Bannockburn, which led to independence. It is said that during this battle many of his fighters proudly wore a depiction of the yew.
Doubt has always surrounded the authenticity of this being Robert the Bruce’s yew tree.
We know that the highly respected Scottish botanist John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843) made the journey to Loch Lomond in 1837 to study the tree and recorded a height of 12 metres and took a trunk girth measurement of 3.96 metres at ground level.
When measured in 1999 the girth was 6.10 metres – an increase of 2.14 metres in 162 years.
Some say that taking into consideration the testing habitat conditions of a very exposed rocky site with typically low nutrient levels, which results in the slow growth of trees, the tree could have been at least 500 years old when Loudon visited.
This means the tree was extant during Bruce’s lifetime, but perhaps it was not of any great stature.
Counter to all this, when the pruned central stem was recently aged by counting its annual rings, it showed the tree to be little more than 350 years old.
There remains the possibility that the name Robert the Bruce’s Yew was transferred from a more ancient but longgone tree, which grew close by.