St. Enoch Church, built in 1780, and the St. Enoch terminus both, in a way, owe their names to Kentigern. St. Enoch is a name you will not find in the hierarchy of saints. There was never any such person, the name being merely a corruption of that of Thenewth, the mother of Kentigern.
The Cathedral itself is dedicated to Kentigern, under the pet name given him by St. Serf.
THE CATHEDRAL
St. Mungo’s Cathedral, standing on the site where, by the “Glas-coed,” or “dark wood” of the original settlement, the saint erected his wooden mission church some thirteen hundred and fifty years ago, is the successor of several buildings that have been erected on the spot, and in its present form dates from what we are accustomed to style the Early English period of the mid-thirteenth century. It consists of nave, 155 feet in length, and choir of 97 feet; with aisles, Lady Chapel, and Chapter House; while the crypt beneath the choir is one of the most striking features of the building.
Occupying the highest point in Glasgow, the Cathedral was in olden days in midst of very beautiful scenery, but in these times it is surrounded by the poorest quarters and although it commands views of some extent, they are only of roofs and chimneys and of the once pretty hillside now thickly set with the larger or smaller monuments of the cemetery called the “Necropolis.” The old Molendinar Burn that ran in the hollow between the Cathedral and that crowded Golgotha was long ago covered up and its course converted into a road spanned by the bridge leading into the cemetery, called the “Bridge of Sighs.” Prominent above all other monuments on that stricken hill is the tall column crowned by an effigy of John Knox. The Cathedral Yard itself is a dismal place. There, forming a close paving, are the memorials of many of Glasgow’s departed citizens: the stones broken and mangy: merchants jostling cock-lairds and dunghill squires with their heraldic achievements weathered in most cases almost beyond recognition; and one of those ferocious denunciatory Covenanters’ monuments with which every visitor to Scotland soon becomes familiar.
They’ll know, at Resurrection Day,
To murder Saints was no sweet play.
So runs the savage rhyme.
The Cathedral, in common with other such ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland, is maintained by the Office of Works, and is opened at ten o’clock in the morning by an uniformed official. It is black without and extremely dark within: the crypt, by reason of the darkness and the maze of pillars, being a place wherein the stranger is reduced to groping his way about. In short, a building of exquisite beauty, but dank and dark to a degree. A great deal of this darkness is caused by the bad, semi-opaque, highly coloured heraldic and other stained glass inserted half a century ago.
Glasgow has ever been proud of its Cathedral. Sir Walter Scott echoes this attitude in “Rob Roy,” where he makes Andrew Fairservice say: “A brave kirk—nane o’ yer whigmaleeries and curliewurlies and opensteek hems about it—a’ solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the warld, keep hands and gunpowther aff it.”