AN insight into key elements of Scottish history was given to Cowdenbeath Rotary Club on Thursday when Bill Glennie was guest speaker.

The former head of history at Dunfermline's Queen Anne High School has studied many sources of information on Robert The Bruce and he told the rotarians that much of the folklore that surrounds the Scots' king of the early 1300s glamorises the reign of a monarch who had worked on both sides of the English-Scottish scene at the time.

Said Bill: "A number of things that have been said about The Bruce actually do not seem to have happened.

"Often famed about watching a spider trying and trying, it would seem did not happen, it was created much later by Sir Walter Scott, and Bruce also fought on both sides during Edward I's time.

"He was also involved in killing the man who he felt could snatch the crown from the Bruce family, John Comyn.

"His most famous moment came in 1314 when he led the Scottish army to victory over the English.

"But before that he supplied siege engines for King Edward at the siege of Stirling Castle, had at one pointed hunted William Wallace, and also had defended the north of England for Edward."

He added: "I suppose we should be cautious about the facts about Bruce, he did what was best to protect his own and family's position which meant the facts are not so glamorous as sometimes portrayed in films, but an absorbing subject nonetheless."