How quickly life changes during the pandemic. Like many of you, I’m at home these days except for the occasional run to the grocery and pharmacy. With new-found time on my hands, I’ve avoided the closets that need cleaning and pulled a well-worn book from the bookshelves that belonged to my mother: Riley Child-Rhymes by Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley. Brittle slips of paper still mark favorite poems.
Riley’s book of poetry was in our home while I was growing up, but I’ve never read it. The inside page revealed in faded but beautiful penmanship, “Ruth Burch from Mama, November 1918.” My mother would have been eight years old when she received it from her mother. Without reading a word of poetry, the book was a treasure.
Riley was born in 1849 and was a bestselling author during his lifetime, achieving an uncommon level of fame. He was honored with annual Riley Day celebrations and called on to perform readings at national civic events. Riley was rock star. He wrote approximately 1000 poems, the majority in dialect and most famously noted for “The Raggedy Man” and “Little Orphant Annie.”
Annie was inspired by Mary Alice Smith, an orphan living in the Riley home during her childhood. She was taken in as a “bound” servant and worked alongside the family to earn her board but was treated like one of the family. The poem is four stanzas; the first introduces Annie and the second and third are stories she is telling young children. Each story tells of a bad child who is snatched away by goblins as a result of misbehavior: “An’ the Gobble-uns ‘at gits you Ef you Don’t Watch Out!”
“Little Orphant Annie” served as inspiration for the character Little Orphan Annie which became a comic strip in 1924 in the New York Daily News. From there it became a radio program in 1930 with film adaptations in 1932 and 1938, a Broadway musical Annie in 1977 and was adapted into a film of the same name three times in 1982, 1999 and 2014. Quite a legacy for a child’s poem published in 1885.
About an hour’s drive from the lake where we spend our summers is the birthplace and boyhood home of Riley in Greenfield, Indiana. The Civil War era home was built by James’s father and is filled with beautiful family heirlooms, many of them crafted by the senior Riley.
We visited the Riley home last summer and enjoyed a tour by a very knowledgeable Riley Hostesses followed by a visit to the museum next door. I especially loved the life-size bronze of Riley sitting on a bench in front of the house, as though waiting for a child to join him and listen to his poetry.
I hope during this time of confinement that you’ll be lucky enough to discover a treasured book hidden in plain sight in your home. If not, enjoy the latest best seller waiting in the stack for you to read. Now’s the time.
Oh thank you for this charming message. I remember reading those poems or having them read to my brother and me I suppose. Didn’t he write The Raggedy Man? I’m going to search out his poems now. Thanks so much for reminding me of this poet and adding such interesting details about him.
My mother had that book too, and we loved Little Orphant Annie!