Poet. He helped fashion a Scottish national identity by writing his epic poem, The Brus, about the life of King Robert Bruce, the hero who secured Scottish independence after many failed attempts. In Barbour's fable of "Robert Bruce and the Spider," the king has been defeated six times, but after seeing a spider in a cave cast its web six times and fail, only to succeed the seventh time, the hero resolves to try again, and subsequently defeats the English at the battle of Bannockburn.