Kentigern, ST, the apostle of Cumbria, was son of the Princess Thenew, who, being found to be with child, was first cast from Dunpender or Traprain Law, and next exposed on the Firth of Forth in a coracle. It carried her out to the Isle of May and then back to Culross, where she bore a son (about the year 518). Mother and child were brought by shepherds to St Serf, who baptised them both, and reared the boy in his monastery, where he was so beloved that his baptismal name Kentigern ('chief lord') was often exchanged for Mungo ('dear friend'). Arrived at manhood, he planted a monastery at Cathures (now Glasgow), whither he had been led by two untamed bulls; and in 543 he was consecrated Bishop of Cumbria. In 553 the accession of a tyrannous prince drove him to seek refuge in Wales, where he visited St David, and where, on the banks of another Clyde, he founded another monastery and a bishopric, which still bears the name of his disciple, St Asaph. In 573 he was recalled by a new king, Rederech Hael ('Roderick the Bountiful'); and first at Hoddam in Dumfries-shire, then at Glasgow, he renewed his missionary labours. About 584 he was cheered by a visit from Columba. He died 13th January 603 ('when he was 185 years old'), and was buried at the right-hand side of the high altar in Glasgow Cathedral. A fragment of a Life, composed at the desire of Herbert, Bishop of Glasgow, and the longer Vita Kentigerni by Joceline of Furness, both belong to the later half of the 12th century. Bishop Forbes gives translations of them, and we have adopted his rationalising chronology. Joceline's Life teems with miracles, which were rooted so deeply in the popular fancy, that some of them sprung up again in the 18th century to grace the legends of the Cameronian martyrs. Others are still commemorated by the armorial bearings of the city of Glasgow—a frozen hazel branch which his breath kindled into flame, St Serf's pet robin which he restored to life, a hand-bell which he brought from Rome, and a salmon which rescued from the depths of the Clyde the lost ring of Rederech's frail queen. Nor is it St Mungo only whose memory survives at Glasgow; 'St Enoch's Church' commemorates his mother, St Thenew. To the saint himself there are eight dedications in Cumberland, and fourteen in Scotland.
See Bishop Forbes's Lives of SS. Ninian and Kentigern
(1874); Skene's Celtic Scotland (vol. ii. 1877); and Beveridge's Culross and Tulliallan (1885).