DURING. the sojourn of St. Mungo in
Wales, which is said to have lasted for eleven years, civil war raged in
the kingdom of Cumbria, or Strathclyde; but a decisive battle at Arthuret,
on the borders of Dumfriesshire and Cumberland, or, as some think, at
Airdrie, settled the dispute in favour of Roderick the Bountiful, who, it
is said, had been baptised by St. Patrick in Ireland. One of the first
acts of his reign was to send to St. Mungo in Wales, praying him most
urgently to return. The saint complied with his request, and his re-entry
was one of triumphal rejoicing.
Either at the time of his return, or
shortly after it, St. Mungo was preaching to the people on a plain, but as
he could not be seen or heard by a large portion of the multitude, he
manifested his miraculous power by causing the ground on which he stood to
rise up into a mound, and he then continued his remarks, to the better
edification of his hearers. Tradition has it that the place where this
event occurred was at what is now known as Dovehill, off the Gallowgate, a
little to the east of Glasgow Cross, and that this incident gave rise to
the motto of the city, "Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the
Word."
