Such an association of ideas—of connecting public welfare with holy men and prosperity with obedience to their exhortations—was perhaps fully as reasonable as is the modern desire of our City Councils and Boards of Trade for railways, electric lights, and the location within their municipal bounds of factories and commercial establishments. Even villages then welcomed the monks with free hand, much as our towns boom their reputation by offering building-sites free to those who will locate. So also the reason why in Europe we find so slight a variety of names for boys and girls, and why in certain regions particular local names are so frequently repeated, is because of the zeal and industry of certain old-time saints. According to the popularity of the holy man or woman was the census of boys’ and girls’ names—as, for example, in Holland, Kilaen and Fridolin; in France, Henri or Denis; in Ireland, Patrick and Bridget; in England, George and Mary; and in Scotland, Mungo, Andrew, or some other Christian name once borne by a spiritual pioneer, whose story is one of inspiration.
In such a climate and era of opinion, Glasgow took for its patron saint, Mungo, and the municipal motto and arms are wholly identified with his career. “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word” was his verbal gift and bequest, though in ordinary use and conversation the municipal motto is shortened to “Let Glasgow flourish.” This is very much as in the Netherlands the national motto, once much longer, is now abbreviated to two words in Dutch (or rather French) which in English mean “I will maintain.” Our own native city has the advantage of having adopted that scriptural command, or desire, which begins a famous chapter in Hebrews, “Let Philadelphia continue.”
Kentigern, whose name meant “chief lord,” was one of the three pioneer apostles or missionaries of the Christian faith in Scotland. Ninian took as his task the converting of the tribes of the south; St. Columba was the apostle of the west and north; while Mungo restored or established the religion of the British folk in the region between the Clyde and Cumberland. Of high birth and of early British stock, he saw the light at Culross in the year 514. His mother Thenau was the daughter of a saint of the Edinburgh region. So dearly was he beloved by the monastic brethren that his baptismal name of Kentigern was exchanged in common speech for Mungo, meaning “lovable,” or “dear friend.” Leaving Culross, he made use of the chief forces of missionary propagation in that age, by planting a monastery at a place now known as Glasgow. He became bishop of the kingdom of Cumbria, as the region, partly in the later-named England and partly in Scotland, was then called.
When this holy missionary lived, there were no such specific regions, with boundaries fixed by surveyors and known as England and Scotland, nor were Highlanders or Lowlanders discriminated by any such later and useful terms of distinction. The region which Mungo first entered was called Cumbria and was then and long afterwards an independent kingdom. It has since been broken up into Cumberland in England, and that part of Scotland which is now divided into the shires of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Ayr, Lanark, Peebles, Selkirk, Roxborough, and Dumfries. The name of Cumbria, notably differentiated from what in recent centuries has been called England, was governed by its own kings, who had their seat at Dumbarton or Glasgow. The name still lingers in the Cumbria Mountains. In this great knot of peaks and hills lies the famous British “lake district,” which is very much in physical features like Wales, being unsurpassed in the British archipelago for picturesqueness and beauty.
When the varied Teutonic tribes—Saxons, Angles, Frisians, Jutes, and what not from the Continent—pressed into the Lowlands, the natives inhabiting the western and more mountainous districts, north of the Forth and the Clyde, had to be distinguished from the newcomers. Then it was that these people of the hill country received names not altogether complimentary. They were called the “Wild Scots” or the “Irishry of Scotland,” and only in comparatively recent times “Scotch Highlanders.” The last prince of Cumbria, named in the records, was the brother and heir of King Alexander I of Scotland.
Glasgow is really a very modern city. As the city on Manhattan is the evolution from a fortress, so the cathedral was the nucleus around which the ancient town of the “dark glen” grew. The university, when founded, became also a magnet to attract dwellers. In the twelfth century, King William the Lion erected the settlement into a burgh, with the privilege of an annual fair. Yet even down to the sixteenth century, Glasgow was only the eleventh in importance among Scottish towns. It was the American trade, after the union with England, which gave an immense stimulus to its commerce. If “Amsterdam is built on herring bones,” the Scottish city became rich through the tobacco leaf. For a long time the merchants of Glasgow, who traded with Virginia, formed a local aristocracy, very proud and very wealthy. For a century or more, this profitable commerce lasted. Then our Civil War paralyzed it, but other industries quickly followed.
The permanent wealth of Glasgow comes, however, from its situation in the midst of a district rich in coal and iron. Furthermore, the improvements made in the steam engine by James Watt, and the demonstration, by Henry Bell, that navigation with this motive power was possible, wrought the transformation of Glasgow into the richest of Scottish cities. Speaking broadly, however, as to time, Glasgow’s wealth is the creation of the nineteenth century, and its influence upon the world at large is not much older. As upon a ladder, whose rungs are sugar refining, the distillation of strong liquors, the making of soap, the preparation of tobacco, the introduction of the cotton manufacture, calico printing, Turkey-red dyeing, beer-brewing, and the iron trade, including machine-making and steamboat building, the prosperity of Glasgow has mounted ever upwards.
The tourist seeking rest, refreshment, and inspiration is but slightly interested in mere wealth or prosperity that is wholly material. So, despite the attractive solidity of its houses, built of free-stone, and of its streets running from east to west, in straight lines and parallel with the river, the city of Glasgow, with its dingy and ever smoky aspect, has little to attract the traveller whose minutes are precious and whose days on the soil are few. So on this first visit, a day and a night sufficed us, and then we left the burgh of the (once) dear green spot and took the train to “Edwin’s burgh,” or Edinburgh.
Many times did we revisit Glasgow, noting improvement on each occasion. We came to consider this the model city of Great Britain in its municipal spirit and constant improvement. We blessed the Lord for electricity which is steadily annihilating smoke and brightening the world. “The city is the hope of democracy.”