Greyfriars Bobby (4 May 1855 – 14 January 1872) was aSkye Terrier orDandie Dinmont Terrier[1] who became known in 19th-centuryEdinburgh for spending 14 years guarding the grave of his owner until his death on 14 January 1872. The story continues to be well known inScotland, through several books and films. A prominent commemorative statue and nearby graves are a tourist attraction.
He was buried just inside the gate ofGreyfriars Kirkyard, not far from John Gray's grave.[3]
A year later, the English philanthropistLady Burdett-Coutts was charmed by the story and had a drinking fountain topped with Bobby's statue (commissioned from the sculptorWilliam Brodie) erected at the junction ofGeorge IV Bridge and Candlemaker Row (opposite the entrance to the churchyard) to commemorate him.[5][7]
John Gray (died 15 February 1858) commonly known in popular culture as Auld Jock, was agardener who came to Edinburgh in 1850 with his wife Jess and son John.[8] He avoided working in aworkhouse by joining theEdinburgh City Police as anightwatchman.[9] Around this time he looked after Greyfriars Bobby.[10] Bobby would follow John Gray whilst he was at work. According to records, policemen were obliged to have watchdogs with them.[11]John Traill claimed that John Gray was a farmer who regularly visited his coffee house at the one o'clock gun, though this might have been embellished as Traill didn't own the coffee house until four years after John Gray died.[11] Gray reportedly died oftuberculosis on 15 February 1858 and was buried inGreyfriars Kirkyard.[12] For 14 years, the dog stayed at his master's graveside.[13]
In January 2018, his grave was toppled by vandals.[14] George Robinson of theOne O'Clock Gun Association said "There are guys wandering around there totally out of their mind. You can't control that."[15]
Greyfriars Bobby withJohn Traill and his family, 1868
The accuracy of stories of Greyfriars Bobby has been challenged many times: for instance, in Forbes Macgregor'sGreyfriars Bobby: The Real Story at Last,[16]Jan Bondeson'sGreyfriars Bobby: The Most Faithful Dog in the World,[17] and Richard Brassey's "Greyfriars Bobby The Most Famous Dog in Scotland".[18]
Questions about the story's accuracy are not new. In a newspaper article inThe Scotsman, "Greyfriars Bobby A Dog's Devotion" (11 August 1934), Councillor Wilson McLaren responds to contemporary questions about the accuracy of the stories by describing his own conversation, in 1871, with "Mr Traill" of "Traill's Coffee House" in relation to the dog he himself was then feeding, reassuring readers about the story Mr Traill had given him, and describing responses in 1889 to questions about the story's accuracy.[19] A sense of the difficulty of determining accuracy is gained from two opposing letters toThe Scotsman newspaper on 8 February 1889 (part of the debate referred to by McLaren), both from people claiming close links toGreyfriars Kirk, both claiming to have known of the dog personally but with opposing views over the accuracy of stories.[20]
A common discussion is over which of two people named John Gray was the real owner of Bobby (one being a night watchman and the other a farmer).[4] In Councillor McLaren's account, Mr Traill in 1871 had spoken about John Gray the farmer.[19]
Jan Bondeson's book advances the view that fundamental facts about the dog and its loyalty are wrong. Bondeson states as background that in 19th-century Europe, there are over 60 documented accounts of graveyard or cemetery dogs. They were stray dogs, fed by visitors and curators to the point that the dogs made the graveyards their home. People began to believe that they were waiting by a grave and so the dog was looked after. Bondeson claims that after an article about Bobby appeared inThe Scotsman, visitor numbers to the graveyard increased, which supposedly created a commercial benefit for the local community.[17] Bondeson also speculates that in 1867, the original Bobby died and was replaced with a younger dog, which explains Bobby's supposed longevity.[17]
According to a book published in 2022,[21] Bobby was more likely to have been adandie dinmont terrier than a Skye terrier as is generally supposed. The claim was made by Mike Macbeth, president of the Dandie Dinmont Terrier Club of Canada. Macbeth pointed out that the dandie dinmont terrier was extremely popular in Scotland at the time, with some 60 breeders in the Edinburgh area, whereas skye terriers tended to be confined to theIsle of Skye.[22]
Greyfriars Bobby's Bar, a pub located on the ground floor of the Candlemaker Row's houses.[23]
Greyfriars Bobby's headstone, the headstone was erected by The Dog Aid Society of Scotland and unveiled by theDuke of Gloucester on 13 May 1981.[24] The monument reads, "Greyfriars Bobby – Died 14 January 1872 – Aged 16 years – Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all".
In 2021 a new monument to mark the 150th anniversary of the dog’s death was placed close to the east wall of Greyfriars Kirk. This was ordered by Robbie Beattie, a senior manager with Edinburgh City Council's Bereavement Service.[25] No consultation or conventional commissioning process was undertaken, despite the Kirkyard lying within aUNESCOWorld Heritage site.[26]
Memorial to Bobby in Greyfriars Kirkyard, erected in 2021
ABritish Rail class 47 number 47711 was named "Greyfriars Bobby" in 1981. One of the original nameplates now sits above the sales counter at Harburn Hobbies model shop in Edinburgh.[31]
The 1945 filmThe Body Snatcher, has an oblique reference to Bobby. The title character John Gray, played byBoris Karloff, while seeking to dig up a corpse inGreyfriars Kirkyard, encounters a dog (named "Robbie") guarding the grave. The dog is killed.[33]
In 1964, popular Scottish duoThe Alexander Brothers recorded a song 'Greyfriars Bobby' onPye Records which refers to Bobby being loyal to a shepherd.[34]
Gaspode, a talking dog in theDiscworld fantasy novels ofTerry Pratchett, claims to be named after a famous dog named Gaspode with a similar story to Greyfriars Bobby, though he says it was later discovered that the reason this Gaspode stayed howling by his master's grave was that his tail was trapped under the gravestone.[35]
In 2019, theRoyal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh did a production ofA Christmas Carol[36] that relocated the events of the tale to Edinburgh a year after Auld Jock's death, attributing the old man's death to his being evicted by Scrooge. Bobby is depicted in the play by a puppet, and is shown to be friends with Tiny Tim (also portrayed by a puppet); Scrooge's vision of the future sees Bobby being taken by thedog-catcher after Tiny Tim's death means there is nobody to warn Bobby. The play concludes with Scrooge using a gift left behind by the Spirit of Christmas Nooadays (the Scots equivalent of the Ghost of Christmas Present) to provide Bobby's licence, thus protecting him from the dog-catcher.[37][38]
^Robert Petterson,The One Year Book of Amazing Stories 365 Days of Seeing God’s Hand in Unlikely Places, Tyndale House Publishers, 2018ISBN978-1496424037
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