From Harvey River by Lorna Goodison Page A

way. They walked, they wrote petitions, even to the Queen herself. For their efforts they got a letter from Queen Victoria, which recommended the starving landless Jamaican people practise industry, thrift, hard work, and obedience.
    Governor Eyre ordered Paul Bogle and George William Gordon to be hanged for leading the uprising that we were taught in school was the “Morant Bay Rebellion.” Some four hundred desperate people stormed the courthouse in MorantBay and clashed with the local volunteer guards. Twenty-one men, mostly white, were killed. More than six hundred ex-slaves were executed and as many flogged in response to the uprising. A dispatch from Col. J.H.F. Elkington to the commander in the field went as follows. “Hole is doing splendid service all about Manchioneal and shooting every black man who cannot account for himself. Nelson at Port Antonio is hanging like fun by court martial. I hope that you will not send any black prisoners. Do punish the blackguards well.” One month after, the Morant Bay River in St. Thomas was still stinking, polluted from the number of corpses floating in it.
    After the Morant Bay Uprising, to say that your name was Bogle was to sign your own death warrant. Some of the surviving Bogles coined protective variations of their great name, such as Bogues, Boggis, and Bogey. John Bogle and his parents had walked across the island from St. Thomas to Hanover, removing themselves as much as was possible from what happened in St. Thomas. As far as the east is from the west, John’s family travelled to the parish of Hanover, trying to keep their lives and to keep the great name of Bogle alive. But ironically they ended up being called Buddle instead of Bogle by many Hanover people. And one Sunday in 1875, as sure as fate, Leanna was walking towards the town of Savanna la Mar, and walking towards her on the main road was the same man she had been seeing in her dreams, leading a big grey mule. She began to laugh as she recognized him, and he began to laugh even louder. They met in the middle of the road, and he said to her, “If you was my missus, I wouldn’t make you walk. I would give you this nice grey mule.” From that day, they never lived apart, until John Bogle died. They lived, farmed, and flourished in Grange, Westmoreland, and Leanna rode her grey mule, wore her money jewellery, necklaces and braceletsfashioned from silver coins soldered together, and lived a happy, prosperous life. When her mother married John Bogle, Margaret, who was six years old, told him, “You not my father.” He said, “I know, but I am the man who will honour your mother.”
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    â€œMe meet the man who intend to put him ring pon mi finger.”
    That is how Leanna Sinclair announced to George O’Brian Wilson that she was ending their relationship.
    George Wilson, who had by then lost all interest in getting Leanna to surrender completely to him, said:
    â€œFock! So you’re to be married then…well, way you go, just you have my Meg dressed, ready and waiting outside every Sattiday morning, for I’ll not be setting foot in your goddamn yard ever again. I’ll bring her back by nightfall…Oh, don’t imagine tis you who’s leaving me, truth is, I’ve no further use for you!” George Wilson never spoke directly to Leanna again. He did not feel any need to. She had given him what he needed to make his way in Jamaica. She had given him Margaret.

 

    M argaret Aberdeen Wilson met David Harvey when they were schoolchildren. The fact that they both had black mothers and white fathers meant that they had a lot in common, and as long as they lived, they never ran out of things to say to each other. Their childhood friendship blossomed into romance, and when they became teenagers, David began to court Margaret. Leanna and her husband, John Bogle, would stay up in the small sitting room to make sure that the couple outside on the