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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 thefacial 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’‘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.The jolly little dog
went all over the
district, ratting in
the kirk and
visiting friends
as far away
as Bristo
Actor Alex Mackenzie
as ‘Auld Jock’ in the
classic 1961 Disney
interpretationIn 1873 Lady Burdett-
Coutts commissioned
this statue which
was erected at the
southern end of
the George IV BridgeCdV photograph of
Greyfriars Bobby I,
by W.G. PattersonAn engraving of Gourlay Steell’s painting of
Greyfriars Bobby I, from Animal World, May 2 1870The inscrutable
Bobby receives his
daily homage from
the wide-eyed
tourists and their
flashing cameras
and smartphones