A 10-inch-tall garden gnome missing and believed stolen since last September turned up on the doorstep of its owners in Gloucestershire, England last week, along with a photo album chronicling its "travels" in 12 foreign countries. Eve and Derrick Stuart-Kelso seemed pleased to have their errant lawn ornament home again, though Eve admitted to reporters that she had forgotten in the interval that the plaster leprechaun known to the family as "Murphy" even existed.
The incident is reminiscent of a subplot in the 2001 French film Amelie in which a gnome inexplicably disappears and its owner begins receiving anonymously mailed photos of the statuette taken in different tourist locations around the world. That idea was based, in turn, on a real-life prank that inspired many imitators during the 1980s and afterward, as documented by folklorists Bill Scott and Jan Harold Brunvand.
Gloucestershire police say they are still treating the theft as a crime.
Read more about it:
• Gnome at Last: Stolen Garden Elf Is Returned... - Daily Mail
• How Murphy the Stolen Gnome Went Around the World... - The Independent
• In Pictures: Gnome Returns Home - BBC
• Where's My Gnome? - Urban Legends
• Hobbits Begone, Here Come the Gnomes - NY Times
• Roaming Gnomes in the News Again - Christian Science Monitor
The incident is reminiscent of a subplot in the 2001 French film Amelie in which a gnome inexplicably disappears and its owner begins receiving anonymously mailed photos of the statuette taken in different tourist locations around the world. That idea was based, in turn, on a real-life prank that inspired many imitators during the 1980s and afterward, as documented by folklorists Bill Scott and Jan Harold Brunvand.
Gloucestershire police say they are still treating the theft as a crime.
Read more about it:
• Gnome at Last: Stolen Garden Elf Is Returned... - Daily Mail
• How Murphy the Stolen Gnome Went Around the World... - The Independent
• In Pictures: Gnome Returns Home - BBC
• Where's My Gnome? - Urban Legends
• Hobbits Begone, Here Come the Gnomes - NY Times
• Roaming Gnomes in the News Again - Christian Science Monitor
Comments
HUH??? Sooooo, is it true or not???
Actually, this may have been derived from a much earlier incident. A fellow student of my brother at Leicester University in the 1970s did this prank. More recently, a copycat of these wheeze did it in the area where I live. One of the photos was shown in the newspaper.
HOWEVER, the Police could be on thin ice because it is NOT a crime in the UK to take something belonging to another person unless there is a clear intention to deprive them of it permanently. Indeed, the crowning glory of this particular prank is to return it to the place from which it was taken, marking the end of the gnome’s holiday. Therefore, it is highly probable that there is EVERY intention to return the gnome to its owner … once the vacation is over!
My Dad did this prank inbthe 1970s collaborating with friends at other universities…
It made gte national news and I have clippings somewhere…