WAY Dusky Glen is still an enchanted land
WE REVISIT DEREK PARKER’S RAMBLES THROUGH RENFREWSHIRE
Today, Bardrain Wood clings to a steep hillside just a few fields away from Foxbar housing estate on the outskirts of Paisley.
Fifty years ago, when it was one of my favourite childhood haunts, the plantation and its ancient Scots pines were miles away from the town.
But, despite encroaching urbanisation, the familiar firwood has survived the devastation which has decimated much of Paisley’s countryside.
Still thriving, too, is Bardrain’s Dusky Glen, the scene of so many boyhood memories. The hallowed haunt is one of the loveliest spots in Renfrewshire.
A series of cascading waterfalls carries the fast-flowing waters of the Brandy Burn through a wooded ravine gouged from the braeface.
Down in the glen, pools of water canopied by trees and moss-mantled rocks provide refuge for speckled trout.
Dippers – small brown birds with white chests and a unique bobbing and curtseying action – perch on streamside rocks to grab water insects. Grey herons stalk the shallows hoping to spear unwary fish.
Leafy mats of golden saxifrage flowers carpet stony ledges while burnside pine glades are illuminated by white starry clusters of chickweed wintergreen, which is one of Renfrewshire’s rarest wildflowers. Fragrant bluebells weave purple floral tapestries among green-leaved silver birch trees.
In springtime, exuberant birdsong among the trees heralds the return to Renfrewshire of the green-plumaged willow warblers from their African winter haunts.
Two centuries ago, the Bardrain conifers were weaver poet Robert Tannahill’s ‘dark firs on the stey (steep) rocky brae’.
The Dusky Glen was the sylvan source of ‘the bawling snaw-flooded fountain’.
But in summer Bardrain was graced by ‘the birken (birch) bower, the woodbine (honeysuckle) flower and broomy knowes’.
Alternate names for the Dusky Glen included the Seven Falls and the Fairy Glen. In folklore, fairies were the spirits of the Tuatha de Danaan – the Little People of the Mother Goddess, Dana – who were driven from the woods into underground caverns by the invading Celts.
It was believed these woodland nymphs could bewitch ordinary mortals and spirit them away to fairyland paradises.
Today, in a grim world of materialism and nihilism, the Fairy Glen is still an enchanted land and we are transported down through the years to our childhood days by its magic.