A literary perspective of Jamaica’s longest river

-By Dave Rodney-

Mrs. Nellie Olson migrated to Jamaica from Indiana, USA after the 1907 earthquake with her husband, Rev.  George Olson.  They were both Christian missionaries, and the couple enjoyed a tremendously productive life in Jamaica. They established the Church of God in Jamaica and a theological seminary. They also founded Ardenne High School where Nellie was the first principal until 1944. But a lesser known talent of Nellie Olson was her ability to write poetry, and she penned a most sparkling and lush tribute to a Jamaican river- the Rio Minho in Clarendon.

I first came across the poem, The Rio Minho Glade, in primary school in Savanna-la-Mar, many miles and several parishes removed from the Minho.  Somehow I lost track of the poem and its author, and spent the next twenty five years trying to find this gem.  I finally succeeded, thanks to the efforts of Mrs. Winsome Hudson, executive director at the National Library of Jamaica (www.nlj.gov.jm).  According to Hudson, the poem was first published in January 1930 in the Cosmopolitan, a Jamaican magazine that was owned and edited by the pioneering Una Marson who broke all kinds of barriers in theatre and Caribbean literature. Subscription for the Cosmopolitan was six shillings per year and it regularly featured local poems.

I was only recently able to discover why Nellie Olson who lived in Kingston would have zoomed in on the  wonders of the Rio Minho, and why she would have been sufficiently inspired to capture the journey of the Minho from mountain to sea in poetry.  At 92.8 kilometers (57.7 miles), the Rio Minho is Jamaica’s longest river.   I learned from a Clarendon resident that the Church of God in Jamaica regularly did baptisms in the Rio Minho, so as a church elder it is likely that Nellie Olson made many trips to the river. This could explain her adulation for the river.  Here is the pretty poem below portraying the happy and alluring face of the river. But those who live near the banks of the Minho are also mindful of her angry and treacherous side when   ”nobody canna cross it”.   The accompanying photograph of the Rio Minho was taken by me in June 2011, shortly after days of continuous rains across Jamaica.

THE RIO MINHO GLADE
Laughing flows the Rio Minho,
Rippling over sand beds, shallow;
Leaping over rocky ledges;
Sleeping where the bamboo hedges
Let their dancing shadows quiver
On the smiling mountain river.
Gurgling laughs the joyous Minho;
Softly gleams the sunshine yellow-
Sifting down through bamboo feather-
Melting gold and green together;
While the dry leaves seer and olden
Weave beneath a carpet golden.
Driving up the winding Minho,
Hearing nought but whispers mellow
Lisping from the limpid river-
Rustling as the bamboos shiver,
-Seems like druid glade exalted
Like some temple nave high vaulted.
Resting by the quiet Minho,
Nature seems all things to hallow;
Hushed the hymn of glade and river
Blending trembling notes a-quiver;
While the bamboos bowing there
Seem like sacred heads in prayer.

(Mrs.) Nellie Olson.