$ xpath "/*/*/*[contains(normalize-space(.),'\'')]" <tst.html
Exception running: xpath
net.sf.saxon.s9api.SaxonApiException: XPath syntax error at char 34 in
{...ontains(normalize-space(.),...}:
    Unmatched quote in expression

I think in XPath 2.0 you can double quotes e.g.
  xpath "/*/*/*[contains(normalize-space(.),'''')]" <tst.html

	Martin Honnen
	http://msmvps.com/blogs/martin_honnen/