Graveyard wandering

On my way back from the School of Informatics (where ECA is supposed to have the final year's exhibition so I went to have a look at the space) in the setting sun I strolled into the Greyfriers yard with its Kirk called a Scottish Westmister as it's graveyard is a place of a final rest to manny imminent figures in the Scottish literature.

Walter Scott's father is buried here and the church (accordingly to Andrew Lownie's Edinburgh's Literary Companion) is the place of the meeting of the teenage writer and a love of his life Williamina Stuart-Belsches. Unfortunately his attentions came to nothing - Lownie writes - and a few years later she married a friend of his called William Forbes. At least she is said to inspire a couple of his literary female characters.

The most interesting to me were aristocratic mausoleums which are now incorporated in walls of the surrounding buildings. One kitchen window was situated exactly between the two tombstones and one could see clearly the tenant preparting a nice warm toast to himself and melancholicaly (and what else?) gazing at the graveyard outside the window:

The graveyard and remains of Franciscan's monastery (as Kirk was the first new church to be built in Edinburgh in 1620 since the Reformation) are now in the very center of the town so it is difficult to imagine them being situated in an array of the suburbian gardens not far from a rustic lane of Cowgate.

The graveyard is also a home to Greyfriars Bobby, a very special Skye terrier. The dog refused to leave his master's graveside until its death 14 years later and became a legend (this story is simmilar to that dog in Krakow which now is commemorated by a big, brass monument so Bobby's small granite tombstone looks rather poor in comparison. However I do not think anybody places fluffy doggies for him like they do here.).