Lassie Come-Home

Summary

Lassie Come-Home is the story of a tricolour collie who crosses hundreds of miles of Scottish and English country to return to the boy she loves. In the Yorkshire mining village of Greenall Bridge, Lassie belongs to Sam Carraclough, and every man in the village agrees she is the finest collie he has ever seen. Every afternoon she trots through the village to wait at the school gate for Sam's son Joe at four o'clock. The rich old Duke of Rudling, who breeds show dogs, has tried for years to buy her, and Sam has always refused. But the pit closes, the family lives on the dole, and at last Sam sells Lassie to the Duke so that his wife and son can eat. Joe comes out of school to find no dog waiting, and his parents can hardly bring themselves to explain. At the Duke's kennels Lassie will not eat or respond, and the kennelman Hynes sneers that she has been spoiled in a cottage. When four o'clock comes she grows restless, and three times she escapes and appears at the school gate. Each time the Carracloughs, who are honest people, take her back; on one occasion Joe tells her sternly that she must not come home any more, and once he runs away with her to hide on the moor until his father finds them. To end the trouble the Duke takes Lassie with him to his estate in the Highlands of Scotland, hundreds of miles to the north. There his granddaughter Priscilla, who has seen what the dog means to Joe, lets her slip away. Lassie sets out south, guided only by instinct. She skirts a great loch, crosses mountains and moors, swims a cold river and falls ill, steals and hunts what food she can, and is chased by men who try to catch her. An old couple in a cottage, Dan'l and Dally Fadden, take her in and nurse her back to strength, then let her go when they see she is bound for somewhere. A travelling potter, Rowlie Palmer, shares the road and his meals with her for a time before she leaves him to keep going. Starved and lame, she crosses into England and at last drags herself to the school gate at Greenall Bridge. The Carracloughs nurse her and try to keep her hidden, but the Duke and Priscilla arrive. The Duke looks the dog over, sees perfectly well who she is, and declares that this is no dog of his. He then offers Sam the post of kennelman on his estate, with a cottage, so the family keeps both a living and Lassie. Knight's story first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on 17 December 1938; he expanded it into this novel, published in 1940 by the John C. Winston Company with illustrations by Marguerite Kirmse.

Top Lessons

• Honest when it hurts

  The Carracloughs could keep Lassie each time she escapes, and no one would blame a hungry family much. Instead Sam takes her back, because she was sold and the money spent. Knight makes the poorest family in the book the most scrupulous.

• Faithfulness that keeps going

  Lassie has no map and no master to guide her. She keeps turning south through hunger, sickness and danger because home is where Joe is. Her journey makes loyalty visible as endurance over time.

• Kindness from strangers

  On the road Lassie is helped by people with little to spare: an old couple in a cottage and a peddler on foot. Each gives what they can and lets her go when it is time.

• Generosity that saves face

  At the end the Duke pretends not to recognize his own dog and offers Sam a job, so that the family can keep Lassie without charity or shame. Priscilla's mercy in Scotland and the Duke's tact at home show that the rich can be good neighbors.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The medical content is slight and concerns the dog more than the people. Lassie's journey is a sustained picture of hunger, exhaustion and injury: she loses condition, goes lame, and after swimming a cold river becomes feverish and ill, and the Faddens' care of her is an ordinary cottage nursing of a sick animal. The family's own circumstances, a closed pit and life on the dole, give the background of 1930s want in English mining districts, though Knight does not dwell on illness among the villagers. Any veterinary reading of Lassie's illness is interpretive, since the novel describes it in lay terms.

• Journey chapters

  Lassie swims a cold river and afterward falls sick and weak with fever.

• Journey chapters

  Dan'l and Dally Fadden take the starved, sick collie into their cottage and nurse her until she is strong enough to go on.

• Final chapters

  Lassie reaches Greenall Bridge thin, lame and nearly spent, and the Carracloughs nurse her back.