The Heart of Robert the Bruce.

Until last week it was sealed up in a lead cylinder and buried beneath the Chapter House of the Border abbey.

It had lain there since 1921 when officials of the old Ministry of Works had it unearthed and sealed up in an airtight container. Previously it had been buried under the altar in the medieval abbey - its resting place since the 14th century.

In their guarded way, the scientists involved in the £30,000 exercise say it cannot be proved this relic is the heart of Bruce but more than likely it is. Also the facts and the folklore leading to the finding of a heart contained in a casket located beneath the site of the old altar, backs up this more-than-likely conclusion.

Dr David Breeze, of Historic Scotland, says the heart and its casket is of greater symbolic than archeological importance for Scotland because it is a tangible link with the great events in the Middle Ages and the re-emergence of Scotland as a kingdom. The casket in which the relic was found is a curious cone shaped container nine and a half inches long and showing remarkably little signs of corrosion after nearly seven centuries.

That it is made of lead, not of a precious metal must suggest the liklihood that Bruce's heart was decanted by the victorious Moors or even the defeated crusaders from its original container. As Scottish historian, H.E. Marshall tells it in her own romanticised way: "Bruce's heart was then embalmed and placed in a beautiful box of silver and enamel which Douglas hung round his neck by a chain of gold."

Other equally romanticised versions relate how gallant Sir James Douglas, Bruce's favourite knight, got the task of taking the heart of his monarch on a crusade and how, at the height of the battle, he threw the casket ahead of him as he rode into the enemy, watching them fall, mortally wounded, on the very spot where the casket lay.

Historian Professor Geoffrey Barrow's account of Douglas' task is more measured. He tells it in his biography of Bruce.

How Bruce had always wished to have taken part in a crusade to fight the "Saracens" and why he had asked that his heart be taken from his dead body, embalmed and taken on the next crusade to the Holy Land. Barrow says either the King himself or his nobles did chose Douglas for the honour. Douglas had sailed from Montrose with many other Scottish knights for Flanders early in 1330, with letters of protection signed by Edward III and a letter of commendation to King Alphonso XI of Castile and Leon.

King Alphonso was conducting a campaign against the Moors of Grenada who were being reinforced by contingents from Morocco. Douglas who had command of a division of the Christian army went into battle on March 25, 1330 at Tebas de Ardales. Deceived by the Moorish tactics of making a feint attack, Douglas and the other Scottish knights found themselves cut off from the main body and were overpowered by superior force of Moorish cavalry. Douglas, Sir William Sinclair and Robert and Walter Logan were among the slain while Sir William Keith of Galston survived and returned to Scotland with the body of Douglas and the casket containing Bruce's heart.

Douglas was buried in the parish church of Douglas and the monarch's heart was buried at Melrose. Another mystery may be solved about Bruce when DNA testing on a sliver of bone is carried out. The aim is to establish the cause of death.

King Robert died at his fortress home in Cardross, aged 55, in the Summer of 1329. He had been ill for two years and bedridden much of the time. But he did attend the March 1328 meeting of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh although gravely ill.

Two accounts of the time indicate he had contracted leprosy but Professor Barrow points out: "The Scottish historians do not speak of leprosy, but this could be explained by natural reluctance on their part to attribute to a hero-king a disease regarded with superstitious dread and loathing".

There was no evidence as to what the king or his physicians believed his illness to be but at the same time they was no signs of any attempt in his last years to segregate Bruce from the company of family or friends.

The research in hand at Edinburgh Dental College on the fragment of bone may confirm whether or not the warrior king did indeed die from the wasting disease.