Greyfriars Bobby

John Gray was a night watchman with the Edinburgh City Police, and Bobby walked the rounds with him. Gray died of tuberculosis in February 1858 and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, and the dog would not leave the grave. The gardener put him out repeatedly; he came back over the wall. He stayed fourteen years. The keeper eventually gave up and built him a shelter beside the stone. He was fed at one o'clock each day at Traill's coffee house nearby, when the time gun went off at the castle, and a crowd formed at the gate to watch him go. In 1867 an unlicensed dog was liable to be destroyed and nobody had a claim to him, so the Lord Provost, Sir William Chambers, paid the licence himself and had a collar made with an inscription saying the city was responsible for him. The collar is in the Museum of Edinburgh. He died in January 1872 and was buried just inside the kirkyard gate, in unconsecrated ground, not far from Gray. Baroness Burdett-Coutts paid for the granite fountain and the bronze at Candlemaker Row the next year. The Dog Aid Society of Scotland laid his headstone in 1981: “Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.”

Loved by · John Gray

Honours

• 1867The Lord Provost paid his licence himself rather than see him destroyed as a stray
• 1872Buried inside Greyfriars Kirkyard, in unconsecrated ground near John Gray
• 1873Granite fountain and bronze raised at Candlemaker Row by Baroness Burdett-Coutts
• 1981Headstone laid by the Dog Aid Society of Scotland

Their kind

A short-legged Highland terrier bred to go to ground after fox and badger, long-coated against the weather and stubborn by design.

A life in seasons