Concept of Kentigern

Category: Contemporary Public Art

Concept Of Kentigern by Neil Livingstone. Buchanan Street Precinct.
This sculpture was placed in Buchanan Street Precinct in 1977. It is cast in bronze and sits on a blond sandstone base, outside the House Of Fraser department store and just down from Princes Square shopping centre. Kentigern is another name for St. Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow, who is reputed to have performed the miracle of bringing a dead bird back to life. This bird is well known to all Glaswegians. The following rhyme refers to the symbols which make up Glasgow's coat-of-arms.

The fish that never swam, the tree that never grew,
The bell that never rang, the bird that never flew.

This sculpture is a very abstract representation of this legend. While it does not portray the actual event which it relates to, a saint in the act of reviving a dead bird, it is nevertheless a recognisable form of a bird. During the redevelopment of Buchanan Street in 1999 it was removed and has not been replaced.