Remembering Nellie Olson's 'Rio Minho Glade'

Dave Rodney, Contributor

Nellie Olson migrated to Jamaica from Indiana, in the United States, after the 1907 earthquake with her husband, the Reverend 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, as a youngster 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 25 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.

The river's wonder

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 kilometres (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 it. 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".

A collection of the poems of Nellie Olson called Pondered Poems: Jamaican was published just after her death in 1956. The anthology showcases 50 poems, many of them lauding the natural beauty of Jamaica. A copy of this now-rare collection can be found at the Elsa Goveia Memorial Library (West Indies Collection) at the University of the West Indies, Mona.

The accompanying photograph of the Rio Minho was taken by me recently, 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 sere 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

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