[taken from Chapter 5 Manx Worthies, A.W.Moore, 1901]

ESTHER NELSON (b. circa 1800, d. circa 1845),

daughter of the Rev. John Nelson, Rector of Bride, wrote a book of miscellaneous poems, published in 1839, entitled "Island Minstrelsy," some of which illustrate the traditions and legends of the Isle of Man. Her two best known poems are " The Carrasdhoo Men," a legend connected with the parish of Jurby and the Curragh, and " The Island Penitent," which is founded on a tradition that the Calf of Man was, in the reign of Elizabeth occupied by a man who went there as a penance for having killed a woman in a fit of jealousy.* The Rev. T. E. Brown writes of her:—

We should not forget that true woman of genius. Hester Nelson. Often I think of her, and her early doom; and Bride seems to me a shrine of splendid promise and aspirations unfulfilled save in God

. . . My father thought very highly of her poems. Some he thought worthy of Milton. And that was all breathed in and bred from your Bride hills, and the long stretches of the Ayre.⁺

* It may be mentioned that Miss Elizabeth Cookson and Mrs. A. S. Craven Green, who wrote poems about the Isle of Man, were not Manx by birth

+ "Letters of T.E. Brown." Vol. I., pp.110-11

Esther Nelson baptised Jurby 6 Jun 1810, buried 2 March 1843, Bride