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Updated: May 22, 2025
The sun had dropped behind the western Highlands. Bobby thought it quite time to go home. By day he often went far afield, seeking distraction, but at sunset he yearned for the grave in Greyfriars. The steps up which he had come lay in plain view from the doorway of the chapel. Bobby dropped down the stairs, and turned into the main roadway of the Castle.
And he was thinking, thinking, that he must hasten that other project nearest his heart, of knocking holes in solid rows of foul cliffs, in the Cowgate, on High Street, and around Greyfriars. It was an incredible thing that such a flower of affection should have bloomed so sweetly in such sunless cells.
Traill felt the sting of it. "Ay, the caretaker has been his gude friend, but Mr. Brown is ill of rheumatism, and can no' come out. Nae doubt, if necessary, his deposeetion could be tak'n. Permission for the bit dog to live in the kirkyard was given by the meenister of Greyfriars auld kirk, but Doctor Lee is in failing health and has gone to the south of France.
My brother and my son were both there, and there my gallant Michael lies. My brother, then verging on threescore, being among the prisoners, was, after sore sufferings in the Greyfriars church-yard of Edinburgh, sent on board a vessel as a bondsman to the plantations in America.
Indeed, it came to be remarked, as it is remarked to-day, although four decades have gone by, that no other spot in Greyfriars was so much cared for as the grave of a man of whom nothing was known except that the life and love of a little dog was consecrated to his memory. At almost any hour Bobby might be found there.
Traill by saying quietly to the minister and the church officers of Greyfriars auld kirk: "When Bobby dies I want him laid in the grave with his master." Every member of both congregations knew Bobby and was proud of his fame, but no official notice had ever been taken of the little dog's presence in the churchyard.
'Our Captain, Christ Jesus, said he, 'and Satan, his adversary, are now at open defiance; their banners are displayed, and the trumpet is blown on both sides for assembling their armies. As soon as it is known that he is within the kingdom, we shall learn what we may expect, and that presently too; for this very day the clergy meet in the monastery of the Greyfriars, and doubtless they will be advertised of his coming.
As I craned my neck, Edwin whispered hoarsely in my ear: "Past yin o'cloak, and a dark, haary moarnin." Edwin says I take fiction much more seriously than I do history. He does, too, unless the history happens to be Mary Queen of Scots or something that by rights should have been fiction. Greyfriars Bobby, for instance, is a true tale but affects us both as though it were fiction.
Descending, he made his way to Greyfriars, as the Franciscan house was called, encountering many groups who were already wending their way to lecture room, or, like Martin, returning to break their fast after morning chapel, which then meant early mass at one of the many churches, for only in three or four instances had corporate bodies chapels of their own.
"Man, auld John Knox will turn over in his bit grave in Parliament Close if you put a 'kist o' whustles' in St. Giles." Mr. Traill laughed. "I admit I might have stopped short of the organ but for the courageous example of Doctor Lee in Greyfriars. It was from him that I had a quite extravagant account of this wee, leal Highlander a few years ago.
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