Kentigern

Kentigern [W teyrn, monarch]. Also known as Mungo. Patron saint (d. 603) of Glasgow and early bishop of Strathclyde around whom many legends have accrued. According to tradition, he is the grandson of Urien of Rheged and a relative of King Arthur; his mother was Thenaw, the Christian daughter of King Lot of Lothian, brother-in-law of King Arthur. Kentigern survived two attempts to kill him. First, his mother was about to be executed for her pregnancy but escaped; she recited the psalter while standing in an icy stream. Later the child and his mother were set adrift in a coracle, but were miraculously saved. These associations with water may partially explain Kentigern's identification with the salmon. According to a well-known story, King Rhydderch found a ring he had given his wife on the finger of a sleeping knight. He removed it and threw it into the sea and asked his wife where it was. She turned to Kentigern for help, who proceeded to catch a salmon that had swallowed the ring. The ring and salmon are in the arms of the city of Glasgow. Kentigern was reputed to have baptized Merlin before his death, a possible borrowing from the Irish Buile Shuibhne [The Madness of Suibne] story. Kentigern is also credited with evangelizing Cumbria (Scottish Lowlands) and establishing the Welsh see of Llanelwy (or St Asaph). Stories about Kentigern indicate that he was austere and that he travelled widely in Wales and Ireland; his feast-day is 14 January. See LAILOKEN.

Bibliography

See Joceline of Furness's 12th-century Life of St. Kentigern, in W. F. Skene (ed.), Four Ancient Books of Wales (Edinburgh, 1874);
A. P. Forbes , The Lives of St. Ninian and St. Kentigern (Edinburgh, 1868).
The saint's link to Merlin is in the Welsh poem Lailoken and Kentigern, ed. H. D. L. Ward, Romania, 22 (1893), 514–25.
See also Rachel Bromwich , Trioedd Ynys Prydain, rev. edn. (Cardiff, 1978), 319–21, 548.