Every Glaswegian knows the rhyme. "Here's the tree that never grew, here's the bird that never flew, here's the bell that never rang, here's the fish that never swam."

But how often do we stop and really look at the four small miracles stamped into the city's lamp posts, tenement closes and town hall windows?

A new exhibition at Maryhill Burgh Halls is asking exactly that. Let Glasgow Flourish – The Glasgow Coat of Arms, curated by Dr Caroline Scott, is a warm, free-to-enter celebration of the city's emblem and the saint whose stories made it.

A bird, a tree, a fish, a bell

The coat of arms is, as Dr Scott puts it on her long-running Glasgow Coat of Arms archive, "the history of Glasgow itself". Each symbol traces back to a miracle attributed to St Mungo, the 6th-century monk who founded a Christian community by the Molendinar Burn and gave the city its motto: Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of his word.

The robin, legend has it, was a pet of St Mungo's teacher Saint Serf, killed by jealous classmates and brought back to life in the young Mungo's hands. The tree began as frozen oak branches he kindled into flame through prayer when the monastery fire went out. The bell was a gift from Rome, used to mourn the city's dead. And the fish — the salmon with a ring in its mouth — comes from a tale of royal jealousy on the banks of the Clyde, in which Mungo retrieved a queen's lost ring from the river and saved her from execution.

Glasgow formally adopted the coat of arms in 1866, just as the City Improvement Trust was rebuilding much of the centre. Look up almost anywhere in the older streets and you will still find the bird, tree, fish and bell carved in stone, set in stained glass, or pressed into wood and leather.

A community show, not a museum piece

What lifts this exhibition above a simple history lesson is the people in it. Dr Scott has spent years archiving the countless ways Glaswegians have reinterpreted the city emblem — formal heraldry, yes, but also graffiti, tattoos, knitting, shop signs and children's drawings.

The Maryhill show puts that spirit on the walls. Pictures contributed by Glaswegians — "old and new", as the venue puts it — sit alongside historic versions of the city arms and fresh, original designs. It is a portrait of a city told through the symbols it cannot stop redrawing.

One visitor's comment, shared by the Halls on social media, sums up the mood neatly: "Make me feel surrounded, hugged by Glasgow."

Meet the curator

Visitors who fancy a chat as well as a wander are in luck. Dr Scott is scheduled to be at Maryhill Burgh Halls every Tuesday afternoon throughout the run, on hand to talk through the symbolism, the strange corners of St Mungo's biography, and the quietly obsessive joy of spotting the coat of arms in the wild.

It is, in the best Glasgow tradition, an exhibition that wants you to talk back to it.

If you go

What: Let Glasgow Flourish – The Glasgow Coat of Arms, curated by Dr Caroline Scott
Where: Maryhill Burgh Halls, 10–24 Gairbraid Avenue, Glasgow G20 8YE
When: Until Wednesday 27 May 2026, Monday to Friday, 10am–5pm (check the venue's social channels for occasional weekend openings)
Admission: Free

Bring the kids, bring a relative who has lived here forever, bring someone who has just arrived. The bird, tree, fish and bell belong to all of them — and that, really, is the point.