A new light on Greyfriars Bobby
Author Jan Bondeson revisits the world-famous story of Edinburgh’s best loved wee dog
It must be a somewhat disquieting thought for the dignitaries of Greyfriars that their famous Edinburgh kirk, whose history goes back four centuries, with its churchyard well stocked with historic monuments, is today mainly known for having harboured a stray dog in mid-Victorian times. I am speaking, of course, of that extraordinary animal, Greyfriars Bobby, whose meteoric fame has far eclipsed that of his ecclesiastical alma mater: for every visitor to old Greyfriars, there are ten who have come only to see and revere the monuments to the most faithful dog in the world, who is alleged to have kept vigil on his master’s grave for fourteen long years. Every day, at the sound of the One O’Clock Gun from Edinburgh Castle, he went to have a meal at a restaurant nearby. After being threatened by the authorities for being an unlicensed dog, Bobby was given a ‘licensed’ collar by William Chambers, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh. After Bobby had expired in 1872, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts paid for a handsome monumental drinking fountain to be erected at the corner of Candlemaker Row. Apart from the iconic dog monument in Candlemaker Row, there is Greyfriars Bobby’s gravestone, erected in the triangular plot in front of the kirk, and that of his protean ‘beloved master’, thought by some to have been a Pentland shepherd and by others to have been an Edinburgh police constable. The myth of Bobby the Police Dog is an undesirable by-product of the latter line of thought: who would employ a small terrier in such a capacity, when he could be kicked away like a football by any drunken miscreant? The pilgrims to Greyfriars come from faraway lands, attracted not by the Star of Bethlehem but by the light from the replica lamp-post erected next to the dog monument; they bring not gold, frankincence and myrrh, but dog biscuits, furry toys and ornamental wreaths, which they think Bobby’s spirit would appreciate, once these votive offerings have been deposited next to his gravestone. Before leaving, like some devout Roman Catholic reverently touching a piece of the Holy Cross, or some pagan worshipper paying his respects to the shrine of a little yellow god not far from Kathmandu, they rub Bobby’s shiny nose to secure themselves future prosperity.
There is no doubt that Bobby really existed, or that he spent lengthy periods of time at Greyfriars: not less than fourteen eyewitnesses saw him there from 1860 until 1872. These observations do not support the myth of Bobby’s ‘faithful mourning’, however: the jolly little dog went all over the district, ratting in the kirk and visiting friends as far away as Bristo to obtain a meal. It is also a fact that although the mawkish readers of the RSPCA’s Animal World remained reverent to Bobby and his legend, many Edinburgh people ‘in the know’ were well aware that the story of the mourning little dog was a complete invention. When, in 1889, there was an application to erect a monument on Greyfriars Bobby’s grave, Councillor James B. Gillies stood up in the Edinburgh Town Council to object that Bobby had just been a mongrel of the High Street breed, who had possessed enough sense to take shelter at Greyfriars; his story was just a penny-a-liner’s romance, and Bobby never had any ‘beloved master’ at all. The objections of Gillies and others were heeded, and the children who had collected pennies for Bobby to get a gravestone rebutted; it would take until 1981 for this exception to be remedied, and a gravestone erected for the celebrated cemetery dog, in the presence of none less than Andrew Duke of York.
A set of CdV photographs of Greyfriars Bobby, by the Edinburgh photographer Walter Greenoak Patterson, was produced soon after the little dog had found himself famous, in April 1867. They depict an elderly terrier mongrel, grey or dark yellow in colour, with cataracts in both eyes, and afflicted with a benign congenital deformity known as
The jolly little dog went all over the district, ratting in the kirk and visiting friends as far away as Bristo
The inscrutable Bobby receives his daily homage from the wide-eyed tourists and their flashing cameras and smartphones
facial asymmetry, causing the right side of the dog’s face to be wider than the left one. An early etching of Bobby by Robert Walker Macbeth, and two paintings of him by Gourlay Steell, clearly show the same animal as the CdVs. In contrast, the later portraits of Greyfriars Bobby are of quite another dog: a handsome black, brown and grizzled small terrier. Since it would appear anomalous that two Greyfriars Bobbys would coexist in the cemetery at the same time, it must be suspected that after the old dog had expired later in 1867, he was replaced with another animal; the verger James Brown and the restaurateur John Traill, who both benefited from exploiting Greyfriars Bobby, are likely to have been involved in this scheme. Brown earned money from the tips he was given by visitors to Greyfriars, and from the steady sale of Patterson’s CdVs; Traill’s restaurant, where Bobby received a daily meal, attracted guests who wanted to see the cemetery dog. As the scoffing journalist Thomas Wilson Reid expressed it, the old mongrel dog was soon ‘honoured to death’ and ‘transformed into the similitude of a pure Skye terrier’. The English were wrong to claim that the Scotchman was a hard-headed, incredulous being. Reid exclaimed: here we had a yarn of canine fidelity that entirely lacked substance, being magnified into a city monument, and a famous story to be told to generations yet unborn!
Another objection to the story of Greyfriars Bobby is that it is part of a pan-European myth of extreme canine fidelity, a sentimental notion that after the master had died and been buried, the mourning dog would keep vigil on the grave. This notion was taken advantage by some canine vagabonds roaming into cemeteries, and remaining there because they were taken care of by kind people who thought the cemetery dog was keeping vigil on the grave of its departed master. There are 46 of these cemetery dogs upon record, the majority of them having been at large in Victorian times, from France, England, Sweden and the United States. None of the great cemeteries in Paris was complete without a mourning dog, and London had two ‘Greyfriars Bobbys’, at St Bride’s cemetery, Fleet Street, and St Olave’s cemetery, Southwark. There were cemetery dogs in Lee [East London], Liverpool, Newcastle, Dublin and Belfast. In several instances, it was discovered that the cemetery dog had nothing whatsoever to do with the person it was presumed to be mourning.
The individuals recently debating the question of what breed of terrier Greyfriars Bobby belonged to have conveniently ‘forgotten’ that there were two of these animals: the old dog from 1867 and the younger dog usurping his place. Bobby I is likely to have been a grey or dark yellow terrier mongrel, quite elderly and gloomy-looking as the CdVs of him show. Bobby II, the animal represented on the dog monument, has been claimed by the Skye Terrier Club as one of their own. When the ‘turkey’ film The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby was released in 2005, the club members were outraged that the dog playing Bobby was a West Highland white terrier, and threatened to boycott the film. The film company tried to bluster it out: some thought Bobby had been a Cairn terrier, they asserted, and some thought he had been a Skye, so why could be not have been a Westie? The Sun newspaper saw nothing wrong with Bobby changing colour in this dreadful film, however: why, they could even have used a Great Dane, given that the tall Scottish hero William Wallace had been played by the short-statured Aussie Mel Gibson in the blockbuster film Braveheart!
The question of which breed of terrier Greyfriars Bobby belonged to has recently been reawakened in a book by the dog show judges Mike Macbeth and Paul Keevil: he had not been a Skye but a Dandie Dinmont Terrier, a breed in which they are acknowledged experts. There was immediate media interest in this novel revelation, with most newspapers taking it deadly seriously. ‘Greyfriars Bobby was a bit of a dandie’ the Times punned, whereas the exuberant Telegraph concluded that the ‘Mystery of Scotland’s most loyal dog is solved!’ A visit to the Rothschild Museum of Natural History in Tring, which houses an impressive collection of stuffed dogs from Victorian times, tells us that the phenotype of many dog breeds, terriers not excluded, has changed significantly with time. The similarity between a present-day Dandie Dinmont Terrier and Bobby II on his monument is noteworthy albeit quite inconclusive. Most probably, Bobby II was another small terrier mongrel, with both Skye and Dandie Dinmont blood.
Greyfriars Bobby is today Scotland’s most famous dog, and one of the most celebrated canines in the world; his value to the Edinburgh tourist industry must be very considerable indeed. Perched on his iconic monument like some bizarre quadruped anchorite, the inscrutable Bobby receives his daily homage from the wide-eyed tourists and their flashing cameras and mobile telephones. But unfortunate ones! they are unaware that the dog statue has feet not of solid bronze, but of mere brittle clay, and that they are worshipping not the original canine saint from 1867, but a false prophet usurping his fame.