Prickly meaning behind name
My grandfather, who died peacefully 70 years ago in the big red tenement building opposite the Thorn Inn at the top of Johnstone, was buried at the nearby Abbey Cemetery, in the shadow of the conifercrested Gleniffer Braes.
He came from Shropshire, the land of the ancient Britons, so it was a blessing he quit this world for an eternal home in a neighbourhood steeped in the Old Religion of his pre-Christian ancestors.
The Thorn neighbourhood gets its name from local hawthorn trees ritually revered by long-dead New Stone tribal communities whose rock art at the famous cup-and-ring-marked stone at the nearby Bluebell Woods is one of Renfrewshire’s geological glories.
To prehistoric people, the hawthorn, with its beautiful white blossoms – so graphically portrayed by writer Henry Ernest Bates as ‘the risen cream of milkiness of May time’ – symbolised Spring’s return to the countryside and the triumph of life over death.
Its sharp prickles were an arboreal bulwark against evil while the scarlet
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.
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berries were radiant reminders of the annual self-sacrifice of the Green Man, a primeval vegetational god who died every autumn and returned to the beneficent bosom of the Earth Mother to be reborn in Springtime splendour the following year.
With the advent of Christianity, the pointed prickles evoked memories of Christ’s crown of thorns while the crimson berries were reminiscent of the Sacrificial Blood of the Lamb on the
Cross of Calvary.
Medieval country communities danced round sacred thorn trees to welcome the sun back to its summer haunts at the Beltane fire festival on May 1.
Hawthorns were also ‘kissing trees’ where sweethearts met and pledged undying love.
In the 19th century, the annual Thorn Fair, with its cattle-swapping, horse races, fiddlers, tambourines, boxing booths, merry-go-rounds, hot-pea stalls, coconut shies, fortune-tellers, crystal-ball gazers, gypsy caravans and dancing, took place on the first Thursday after the second Monday in July.
Lasting for days and so popular, it was eventually moved down the Thorn Brae to Houstoun Square before finally fading into obscurity.
The original thorn tree which gave the area its name stood at the junction of Thornhill and Beith Road where it was a familiar landmark for many years.
Paradoxically, it was considered unlucky to bring hawthorn blossom into the house. Otherwise, there would be a death in the family.
Rural dwellers were aware the pungent smell from decaying hawthorn leaves was caused by the release of triethylamine, a foul odour produced by decomposing corpses.
It was also the smell of the Black Death plague which killed thousands of people in medieval Britain.
Today, the hawthorn haven at the Thorn is now a busy road junction.
But the quaint old name is a romantic reminder of a rural realm when Man reverenced nature and contemplated the countryside with spiritual, and not economically-avaricious, eyes.