WAY Auld Jean had a lucky escape
WE REVISIT DEREK PARKER’S RAMBLES THROUGH RENFREWSHIRE
Mine of information
The rugged ravine, reverberating with the roar of the cascading Brandy Burn and overhung by towering trees and craggy cliffs between Elderslie and Foxbar, is a dark domain.
Known as Glen Patrick because the patron saint of Ireland preached there during the seventh century, the precipice-pinnacled gorge was an ideal location for illicit stills where contraband whisky was manufactured from malted barley, and the brandycoloured water which gives the burn its name.
The glen was the haunt of witches travelling between Paisley and the prehistoric burial ground at the Bluebell Woods, near Quarrelton coal-mining village, where they held midnight covens.
One ‘witchie wifie’ who celebrated moonlight rituals was Auld Jean Dreghorn, who lived in a hovel on Brediland estate, near Foxbar.
One dark, stormy night in the year 1757, Jean headed homewards along the muddy track known as the Coal
Derek Parker knew many of Paisley’s secrets – the grimy and the good.
He wandered every corner in search of the clues that would unlock Renfrewshire’s rich history.
These tales were shared with readers in his hugely popular Parker’s Way column.
Road, or Gypsy Lane, when she found her way blocked by the flooded waters of the Brandy Burn thundering into the gloomy gorge.
Attempting to ford the burn at the Stone Bridge at Leitchland Road, the old crone slipped and plunged into the torrent, which swept her towards the ravine’s rock-ridged waterfalls.
Minutes later, two whisky smugglers working an illicit still half-a-mile downstream spotted what they thought was Jean’s dead body floating in a cliff-canopied pool.
They hauled the ‘corpse’ from the water and placed it on a rock overlooking the burn, where it was eerily illuminated by the full moon.
They then carried the body up the steep hillside towards Leitchland House to await removal to the churchyard and burial in a pauper’s grave.
Miraculously, somewhere along the way, the ‘witchie woman’ was restored to life.
Her rescuers ‘had the felicity to witness a resuscitation and she resumed her journey within two hours,’ records a manuscript in Johnstone Library.
Leitchland House, where the old woman was resurrected, was occupied in 1695 by John Finnie and his daughters, Jennet and Jean.
Today, the Brandy Burn still floods the road between Foxbar and Elderslie during storms.
The inundations recall that dark night 250 years ago when Auld Jean Dreghorn nearly perished in a watery grave in the burn.