Note: James Whitcomb Riley was inspired to write this poem by a young girl who did come to his family's house to stay. She worked in the house and she was known as "Allie." A typesetting error made her name into "Annie." In any case, a legendary poem was born when it was published under the name "The Elf Child," in 1885. The poem was still popular when I was a child, way back in the '60's and '70's, and it thrilled me. It's not a fairy tale, but it's perfect for Halloween -- and it does feature goblins -- those cranky little magical creatures! By the way, the goblin illustration is by Goya.Enjoy your Halloween!
- INSCRIBED WITH ALL FAITH AND AFFECTION
-
- To all the little children: -- The happy ones; and sad ones;
The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and glad ones;
The good ones -- Yes, the good ones, too; and all the lovely bad ones. -
ITTLE Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay, - An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
- An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
- An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
- An' all us other childern, when the supper-things is done,
- We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun
- A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,
- An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you
- Ef you
- Don't
- Watch
- Out!
-
- Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn't say his prayers,--
- An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
- His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl,
- An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wuzn't there at all!
- An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press,
- An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess;
- But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an' roundabout:--
- An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
- Ef you
- Don't
- Watch
- Out!
-
- An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin,
- An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin;
- An' wunst, when they was "company," an' ole folks wuz there,
- She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care!
- An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide,
- They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side,
- An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she knowed what she's about!
- An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
- Ef you
- Don't
- Watch
- Out!
-
- An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
- An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
- An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,
- An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
- You better mind yer parunts, an' yer teachurs fond an' dear,
- An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
- An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,
- Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you
- Ef you
- Don't
- Watch
- Out!
25 comments:
Great minds must think alike. I read this poem for my blog too. You have nice blog.
That picture is very disturbing. Like the poem though!
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http://little-object-a.blogspot.com/
When I was a small child, my mother would recite poetry to me while she worked around the house. She had taught in a country school in the early 1940's when memorization was part of the state's requirements...
...anyway, this was one of my favorites...and I don't think I've heard it for over 45 years! Wow. Thanks for taking me back.
Happy November. Enjoy your extra hour ~Natalie
Thank you so much for sharing this! It's absolutely marvelous!!!
Wow – this is a creepy poem at least for me - someone who already has an unfriendly disposition toward small, dark places and “cubby holes”. I like to think that my fear of these places is unwarranted but when stories and movies such as this give me reason to fear them I am quite disturbed. This poem reminded me of the movie, “Paranormal Activity” in which there is a scene where a crawl space is involved which is just great for me since there is a crawl space in the room I sleep in. My nights of sleep have not been so great since that movie. The closet door is shut before I get into bed and the television stays on most of the night usually until it is light outside and I feel like the monsters aren’t so real. But this poem and others like it make my fears seem not so silly when children are taken off by goblins through attics and cubby holes. I’m sure I will think about the “Black Things” coming to get me the next time I misbehave.
Wow, I memorized this poem for a talent show when I was 12! Brings back wonderful, warm memories. Being from right near Shelbyville, IN, where James Whitcomb Riley was from, this has such a precious place in my heart. Thank you for sharing it with the world!
WOW
IT WAS 2 DAYS AGO I LOOKED UP BTHIS POEM AND FOUND IT
MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER USED TO TELL IT TO ME EVERY TIME I WENT OVER
WHEN I READ IT THE OTHER DAY I CRIED BECAUSE IT BROUGHT BACK GREAT MEMORIES
HOW FUN TO SEE IT JUST A FEW DAY LATER
WEIRD HOW THINGS HAPPEN
All I can say is, oh my! What a creepy poem! Every time I think of the name "Little Orphan Annie" I think of my favorite Christmas movie, "The Christmas Story" when Ralphie was obsessed with Little Orphan Annie show on the radio and had to eat a bunch of mushy cereal to receive his decoder pin.
I also think of the movie Annie but this poem is just plain odd! The picture is highly disturbing. I like happy poems, not dark disturbing. The parents sound horrifying. I would dislike being in Annie’s position.
I would like for the poem to have a happy ending for example Daddy Warbucks adopting Annie and living happily ever after. But, in reality happily ever after does not come around so often. I wonder what the author is thinking he wrote this poem. Did he go through the pain and suffering that Annie did? We will never know.
Ashley G.
All I can say is, oh my! What a creepy poem! Every time I think of the name "Little Orphan Annie" I think of my favorite Christmas movie, "The Christmas Story" when Ralphie was obsessed with Little Orphan Annie show on the radio and had to eat a bunch of mushy cereal to receive his decoder pin.
I also think of the movie Annie but this poem is just plain odd! The picture is highly disturbing. I like happy poems, not dark disturbing. The parents sound horrifying. I would dislike being in Annie’s position.
I would like for the poem to have a happy ending for example Daddy Warbucks adopting Annie and living happily ever after. But, in reality happily ever after does not come around so often. I wonder what the author is thinking he wrote this poem. Did he go through the pain and suffering that Annie did? We will never know.
Ashley G.
I used to know this by heart.
When I was little!
I have never heard or read this poem before and I am absolutely in love with it! It’s got a great rhythm to it and the language and the way the language is written is just fabulous. To me, the best poems out there are written in such a way that you are still talking in that type of rhythm and dialect when you are done reading it. It is written almost how a child would write something, before he or she learned how to properly spell.
This poem is also a fun way to tell a child how to behave and teach him or her morals. Telling a child that she will be grounded if she doesn’t stop making fun of people doesn’t have the same stopping power as telling her that “two great big Black Things” will show up and take her away from her house and parents does. At the time that this was written saying prayers before bedtime was something that all parents wanted their children to do and one way to make sure they did that would be to tell him that “Gobble-uns” would get him. If my parents had told me that when I was younger I would probably be some sort of nun by now but I was a really gullible child. But the real moral of the story is in the last stanza: be kind to others, be generous, obey your parents and teachers, or the “Gobble-uns’ll git you.”
I love that it is Annie that tells them all of these stories as well. It adds a bit of a mystery element to Annie’s childhood and upbringing in, we can assume, an orphanage. It’s only fitting that someone who probably grew up in really harsh conditions would be telling children to help the needy and dry the orphan’s tears.
Thanks for sharing this poem. I really enjoyed it!
I have to admit I was immediately drawn to this particular post. First of all, I love Halloween, and to me at least this definitely has the Halloween. The picture, which by the way I feel is FABALOUS, looks like little kids trying to dress up in adult scary costumes. In that sense it is really cute to me. The blog title also drew me into this blog. It makes me think of two things; the typical story of orphan Annie that everyone knows (with Daddy Warbucks), and the semi-current scary movie “Orphan.” On that note, I had to read it to see what it was all about. After reading the poem it is obvious it is nothing like the orphan Annie that I know. The first paragraph I guess could be argued to be similar, but the whole poem in itself is not. It’s more of a little moral lesson to kids to mind their matters, watch their behavior, and listen to their authorities. As to the movie “Orphan,” I have not yet seen it and dying to. I heard from a few people that it is good. I would like to quickly just say because this came across my mind while reading other comments to this blog, that the movie “Paranormal Activity,” is a movie that I have yet to make my mind up about. I am a big lover of scary movies; however I don’t know my feelings towards this one. I did however love how it was a great mixed of times that you will be gripping your chair in with moments of fearful suspense, and the next second you will be busting out laughing. You’ll have to see it to get what I mean. Sorry this blog was really just all over the place :)
- Colleen B.
i love going by the riley house in greenfield - i remembered the poem, but not that he had written it. thanks for that!
Hello, I'm from Portugal, and I found you blog in blogger web site, and I realy like it. Congrats :)
if you want, take a look at my blog http://ianaheart.blogspot.com
At the top of blog there's a google tradutor for you could read it. Enjoy! ;)
We learned in class that some of the old fairy tales, especially Madame Beaumont’s version of Beauty and the Beast, were written to teach children proper ways of behaving. I would say that this poem if following that same line of thinking.
I would imagine that telling your children that terrible, scary things will happen to them if they don’t do what you tell them would be fairly effective. But to what end? Scaring children to death is not the best way to motive children. I have two children and I have never employed this tactic nor will I ever. I have found the best way is to communicate my expectations and reason with them. This has always worked, even when they were little.
While fear is an effective motivator, and this is a fun little poem, I don’t think it is the best way to raise children.
As a graduate of James Whitcomb Riley high school, I feel kind of ashamed to have gone to a school named by this man. Elementary, Middle and High Schools always seemed appealing to me when named by presidents or people who invented marvelous things that changed our perception on science. For elementary, I attended William McKinley elementary school. For middle school, I attended Thomas Edison Middle School…and we know about high school already.
I always knew that James Whitcomb Riley was a “famous” poet/writer from the state of Indiana. I never read any of his work before this poem, but once I read it, that is when the shame came.
Maybe his style is what bothers me. It just seems like its…grade school poetry. Let’s look at the first four rhyme words in the scheme of AABB. Stay/Away, Sweep/Keep. To me, it just does not seem appealing.
Furthermore, it sounds like an illiterate redneck came up with some kind of form of the English language. I guess one could say that today I have a little bit of fire inside of me and, at the least, I am spitting the venom onto a dead man and not people that I love or my friends.
I know it is not professional to base an opinion on a writer by only reading one of his/her works, but today is just different. After reading this poem, I felt as though my I.Q. dropped a point or two.
To me after reading the poem today and not remembering it from when I was a child I would think that it would creep out just about any child. And it seems to me that some versions of the boogey man must come from this, another example of what comes and gets you in the dark. And bringing up the A Christmas Story, at this time of year gets me ready for it to be on almost every day it seems like. I think that TV can over due a classic at times and make you not want to watch something that you have enjoyed since you were a child. But things from that movie I’ll never forget is the Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle, and how every time he asks for it everyone’s response is You’ll shoot your eye out. And then when he proves everyone right and he does end up shooting his eye out. And who can forget his little brother and his snow suit and falling and not being able to get up. Such a good entertaining movie, they haven’t made many good Christmas stories since. I got a little off topic but I get distracted easy.
John J
What I thought was most striking about this story was that it was a child teaching other children right from wrong. I wonder if Riley wanted to teach a lesson about how those who have suffered and experienced loss are actually very wise? Maybe this is a stretch, but I would expect that since Annie was acting as the house servant she was probably thought of as from a lower and therefore inferior class. Yet, she is more civilized than the children she describes in her fireside tales.
On a different note, I think it is very funny that the children were threatened with goblins if they didn’t watch out. Riley was clever to recognize how the imagination is what usually scares kids the most. After all, is it not a calming ritual for children when their parents check under the bed and in the closet for monsters?
This was a really fun poem - creepy, sure, but I like when writers effectively portray an accent or dialect.
In the end, isn't this poem indicative of what fairy tales are really all about?
Whether it be encouraging children to move out of their parents home and make a life for themselves (like Beauty and the Beast) or warning children of the dangers that exist in the real world (such as predatory men in "Little Red Riding Hood"), fairy tales, by-the-by, all carry some sort of message.
Sometimes they may not be bluntly stated - though they often are - they all clearly are morality plays intent on passing on some sort of wisdom to their audience which, like in this poem, is usually centered around children.
Great artwork, too.
-Adam K.
Wow, the picture and poem is very creepy. I saw the picture as I was looking down the page and had to stop and look at it again. I looked at the title and didn’t see a connection so I had to read it.
From the title, I really thought the poem would be really similar to the movie or play Annie. However, I didn’t feel the same as I did reading that as I do when I watch the movie. In elementary school I want to the Annie play, at the Amish Acres round barn, and always loved it.
Anyways, the poem really disturbed me out because of it saying, “An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you Ef you Don’t Watch Out!.” It made me think of being out at night. I have a big, ridiculous fear being out in the dark alone and something getting me. I’m always looking around me. If I’m walking to my car after work of something I will call my parents so I am talking to someone as I’m looking around so I feel safer I guess. Yeah, kind of silly I know.
The poem is too creepy for me. I will probably never catch myself looking it up; especially around Halloween or at night. =)
Aww, it's a young Freddy Krueger! How cute.
And most of Riley's stuff is in some sort of dialect, clearly he really enjoyed writing like that.(It's easier to rhyme when you can make up words.)
But he was a good poet, there's no doubt about that. This particular poem reminds me of the little girl from the beginning of Pixar's Up. That's the sort of little girl I imagine coming up with a poem like this.
On a side note, Riley Hospital for Children down in Indianapolis is named after him. They have a lot of his poetry embossed in bronze in the hallways. At least they did last time I was there. I seem to remember this one being near the cafeteria, but I could be mistaken.
I do like how the goblins are all so happy. Especially the one on the right, if that isn't the face of someone who's chilling out to the extreme, I don't know what is.
When I came upon this blog I was really confused. I saw the title Little Orphan Annie and then saw the scary picture below it and didn’t know how the two related. The only memory of Little Orphan Annie that I have is off the cute curly red head in the movies. I then saw that it was related to Halloween and started thinking to myself did I miss something in the movie. I decided to read the blog to see what it was all about. After reading the little introduction I understood a lot better. At first I thought, “Ok, this is cute poem.” After reading further I decided that it is a really good Halloween poem for adult s or kids, it has an eerie feeling that makes it ok for adults. When I was finished reading I was pondering what I would say for the blog and I realized how well written the poem is. I instinctively knew how to read the poem I feel that I fell right into beat with how the author wanted it to be read. If an author of a poem can get the mood from the very beginning it’s pretty good but to be able to use words that aren’t even grammatically correct and still have people understand it was excellent. It set the tone for the whole poem.
Kayla P.
After third time around to this poem I didn’t understand it. Never have I even dreamt about this kind of, how to name it, a slang? JWR wrote the poem in, for me personally, a very strange matter. This can be either slang or some type of older English language.
A story of a goblins getting back at kids for not being good, which is excellent way of keeping them in place and behaving. This story (about goblins) is actually deeply embedded in my culture and my mother used to scare me with it every time I tried to misbehave.
If we looked at that there is always some story in every culture in the world where mischievous children always end up in trouble by someone because they were not doing what they were supposed to. Little Annie is just a reminder.
This poem reminded me of the end of some versions of Little Red Riding Hood. It uses scare tactics to get the children to listen to their parents. Pretty much if you disobey your parents you are going to get taken by goblins in the form of large dark shadowy figures and never seen again or a wolf is going to eat you! How pleasant! I must say when you picture the things that happen to the people stolen by the goblins I think it could be a great horror movie! The image of two dark figures attacking you and taking you away reminds me of a part of the movie The Grudge that I saw. All I know is that at some point in the first half hour there is a large dark shadowy blob over an older woman. I have no idea what its purpose is, but it is what I pictured. I do not know anything about that movie because I can't get through the first 30 minutes without crying. The movie scares me to death!! Once I got to the part with the little boy in the attic I was done! I love scary movies, but that one I could not handle. So thank you for the lovely images right before bedtime and right before Halloween! I did really enjoy this poem though. I was very entertained by the lengths gone to in order to have children obey. And we wonder why Hansel and Gretel didn't just tell their father they knew the whole plan! Kids were scared to death apparently!!
-Kelly H.
This poem was scary and inviting all at the same time. It has a deeper message within it and once you start reading you don’t want to stop. I enjoyed the different style of language that was used throughout the work. I feel that the message of the poem is to warn children to listen to what their elders have to say and to mind them. However, I think that it goes to the extreme in scaring them. Works written during this time probably were not told as lightly as they are today for children. I find the picture to be very frightening also. The unknown is often what scares people the most; I believe the picture and the poem both portray this. Hearing the poem will probably give children fear of what may happen if they misbehave. The part of the poem that I find to be most shocking is “An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wuzn't there at all!” The child is taken from his parents without either of them realizing it. However, I know that in life many things are scary and maybe this also makes children appreciate what they do have. Kayla W.
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