Greyfriars Bobby

Greyfriars Bobby

This statue of Bobby sits at the corner of Edinburgh's Candlemaker Row and George IV Bridge, and is a Category A listed building
Breed	Skye Terrier
Born	4 May 1855 Edinburgh, Scotland
Died	14 January 1872 (aged 16) Edinburgh, Scotland
Resting place	Greyfriars Kirkyard
Known for	Guarding the grave of his owner until he died himself on 14 January 1872
Owner	John Gray
Awards	Key to the City of Edinburgh

Greyfriars Bobby (4 May 1855 – 14 January 1872) was a Skye Terrier who became known in 19th-century Edinburgh for spending 14 years guarding the grave of his owner until he died on 14 January 1872. The story continues to be well known in Scotland, through several books and films. A prominent commemorative statue and nearby graves are a tourist attraction.

Traditional view[]

Albumen print (c. 1865) thought to be of Greyfriars Bobby

Greyfriars Bobby's collar

The best-known version of the story is that Bobby belonged to John Gray, who worked for the Edinburgh City Police as a nightwatchman. When John Gray died he was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, the kirkyard surrounding Greyfriars Kirk in the Old Town of Edinburgh. Bobby then became known locally, spending the rest of his life sitting on his master's grave.^[1][2]

In 1867 the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Sir William Chambers, who was also a director of the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, paid for Bobby's licence and gave the dog a collar, now in the Museum of Edinburgh.^[2][3]

Bobby is said to have sat by the grave for 14 years.^[1][2][3][4] He died in 1872^[3][4] and a necropsy by Prof Thomas Walley of the Edinburgh Veterinary College concluded he had died from cancer of the jaw.^[5]

He was buried just inside the gate of Greyfriars Kirkyard, not far from John Gray's grave.^[2]

A year later, the English philanthropist Lady Burdett-Coutts was charmed by the story and had a drinking fountain topped with Bobby's statue (commissioned from the sculptor William Brodie) erected at the junction of George IV Bridge and Candlemaker Row (opposite the entrance to the churchyard) to commemorate him.^[4][6]

John Gray[]

John Gray (died 15 February 1858) commonly known in popular culture as Old John (Scots: Auld Jock) was a gardener who came to Edinburgh in 1850 with his wife Jess and son John.^[7] He avoided working in a workhouse by joining the Edinburgh City Police as a nightwatchman.^[8] Around this time he looked after Greyfriars Bobby.^[9] Bobby would follow John Gray whilst he was at work, according to records policemen were obliged to have watchdogs with them.^[10] John Traill claimed that John Gray was a farmer that 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.^[10] Gray reportedly died of tuberculosis on 15 February 1858 and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard.^[11] For 14 years, the dog stayed at his master's graveside.^[12]

In January 2018, his grave was toppled by vandals.^[13] George Robinson of the One O'Clock Gun Association said "There are guys wandering around there totally out of their mind. You can't control that."^[14]

Alternative views[]

Greyfriars Bobby with John Traill and his family, 1868

The accuracy of stories of Greyfriars Bobby has been challenged many times: for instance, in Forbes Macgregor's Greyfriars Bobby: The Real Story at Last,^[15] Jan Bondeson's Greyfriars Bobby: The Most Faithful Dog in the World,^[16] and Richard Brassey's "Greyfriars Bobby The Most Famous Dog in Scotland".^[17]

Questions about the story's accuracy are not new. In a newspaper article in The 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.^[18] A sense of the difficulty of determining accuracy is gained from two opposing letters to The Scotsman newspaper on 8 February 1889 (part of the debate referred to by McLaren), both from people claiming close links to Greyfriars Kirk, both claiming to have known of the dog personally but with opposing views over the accuracy of stories.^[19]

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).^[3] In Councillor McLaren's account, Mr Traill in 1871 had spoken about John Gray the farmer.^[18]

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 in The Scotsman, visitor numbers to the graveyard increased, which supposedly created a commercial benefit for the local community.^[16] Bondeson also speculates that in 1867, the original Bobby died and was replaced with a younger dog, which explains Bobby's supposed longevity.^[16]

Memorials[]

Bobby's headstone in Greyfriars Kirkyard

• Greyfriars Bobby Fountain, the fountain includes a life-size statue of Greyfriars Bobby created by William Brodie in 1872. The monument is Edinburgh's smallest listed building.
• Greyfriars Bobby's Bar, a pub located on the ground floor of the Candlemaker Row's houses.^[20]
• Greyfriars Bobby's headstone, the headstone was errected by The Dog Aid Society of Scotland and unveiled by the Duke of Gloucester on 13 May 1981.^[21] The monument reads, "Greyfriars Bobby – Died 14 January 1872 – Aged 16 years – Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all".

Books and films directly about Bobby[]

• The 1902 historical account, "The True Story of Greyfriars Bobby" by Henry T. Hutton, Publisher: Edinburgh
• The 1912 book Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson embellished the story and made John Gray a shepherd, known as "Auld Jock".^[22] The 1961 Walt Disney film Greyfriars Bobby: The True Story of a Dog was based on the book.^[23]
• The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby, another film, was released in the UK in February 2006 starring James Cosmo and Christopher Lee (released elsewhere in 2005 under the alternative title Greyfriars Bobby).^[24] The Edinburgh Castle scenes in this film were actually shot at Stirling Castle. Many expressed reservations that a Cairn Terrier was cast as Bobby, and that new characters were added while one of the major characters in Bobby's life, John Traill, was omitted.^[25]

Other references in popular culture[]

• Challenge to Lassie (1949), is an earlier film based on Atkinson's book, replacing Bobby with Lassie.^[26]
• The 1945 film The Body Snatcher, has an oblique reference to Bobby. The title character John Gray, played by Boris Karloff, while seeking to dig up a corpse in Greyfriars Kirkyard, encounters a dog (named "Robbie") guarding the grave. The dog is killed.^[27]
• Gaspode, a talking dog in the Discworld fantasy novels of Terry 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.^[28]
• Red Dead Redemption 2 features an easter egg that depicts a dog sitting next to its owner's grave in reference to Bobby. A similar easter egg also appears in Grand Theft Auto V.
• In 2019, the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh did a production of A Christmas Carol 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, and Bobby being depicted in the play by a puppet. As the play begins, Tiny Tim considers Bobby a friend, with Bob Cratchitt often leaving food out for him as Scrooge's office is just opposite Greyfriars. 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.^[29]
• A song called "The Ballad of Greyfriars Bobby" appears on The Real McKenzies' album titled "Off The Leash."

See also[]

• Bobbie the Wonder Dog
• Dog on the Tuckerbox
• Fido (dog)
• Hachikō
• Kostya

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Greyfriars Bobby.

• Greyfriars Kirkyard Trust
• The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby (2005) Film website.
• Greyfriars Bobby Statue Location at Waymarking.com website.