Govan Old Parish Church is home to the Govan Stones museum, which contains one of the finest collections of early medieval and Viking-age sculpture in Europe. A collection of over 30 sculptures produced by the Viking-age Kingdom of Strathclyde, a lost kingdom of Old Welsh-speaking Britons who dominated the Clyde valley from the 5th - 11th centuries AD.
The top part of the ‘Cuddy Stane‘ is missing, but a drawing survives from 1856 which shows a horserider carrying a long weapon and mounted on an animal that looks more like an ass than a horse, because of its long, upright ear, hence the stone’s name, ‘cuddy’, which is Scots for ‘donkey’. This has led to speculation that it may represent Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
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