James Whitcomb Riley

The Raggedy Man

{{drop initial|O}} THE RAGGEDY MAN! He works fer Pa;
An' he's the Goodest man ever you saw!
He comes to our house every day,
An' waters the horses, an' feeds `em hay;
An' he opens the shed---an' we all ist laugh
When he drives out our little old wobble-ly calf;

Hired girl hierarchy

The Raggedy Man needs permission from the hired girl to milk the cow—revealing the farm's social ladder where even the lowest-ranking female servant outranks the male hired hand.

An' nen---ef our hired girl says he can---
He milks the cow fer `Lizabuth Ann.---
Ain't he a' awful good Raggedy Man?
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!
W'y, The Raggedy Man---He's ist so good
He splits the kindlin' an' chops the wood;
An' nen he spades in our garden, too,
An' does most things `at boys can't do.---
He clumbed clean up in our big tree---
An' shooked a' apple down fer me---
An' nother'n too, fer `Lizabuth Ann---
An' nother'n, too, fer The Raggedy Man.---
Ain't he a' awful kind Raggedy Man?
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!
An' The Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymes
An'n tells `em ef I be good, sometime;
Knows `bout Giunts, an' Griffuns, an' Elves,
An' the Squidgicum-Squees `at swallers therselves!

Squidgicum-Squees

Riley invents fantastic creatures that sound like real folklore. The child believes these nonsense beings exist—showing how the Raggedy Man's imagination shapes the child's world.

An', wite by the pump in our pasture-lot,
He showed me the hole `at the Wunks is got,
`At live `way deep in the ground, an' can

Wunks transformation

The Raggedy Man tells the child that underground creatures can transform into him or his sister—a darker fairy tale element mixing wonder with mild threat.

Turn into me, er `Lizabuth Ann!
Ain't he a funny old Raggedy Man?
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!
The Raggedy Man---one time when he
Was makin' a little bow-'n-'orry fer me,

bow-'n-'orry

"Bow and arrow"—the Raggedy Man makes toys for the child, doing the craftwork a busy merchant father doesn't have time for.

Says, "When you're big like your Pa is,
Air you go' to keep a fine store like his---
An' be a rich merchunt---an' wear fine clothes?---
Er what air you go' to be goodness knows!"
An'nen he laughed at `Lizabuth Ann,
An' I says, "`M go' to be a Raggedy Man!

Career aspiration

The child rejects his father's merchant-class success to aspire to poverty—the ultimate compliment to the Raggedy Man, and a child's misunderstanding of how class works.

I'm ist go' to be a nice Raggedy Man!"
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Riley's Dialect Performance

James Whitcomb Riley made his reputation with Hoosier dialect poetry in the 1880s-90s, performing these poems on lecture circuits across America. "The Raggedy Man" appeared in his 1890 collection *Rhymes of Childhood*, written in the voice of a rural Indiana farm child.

The spelling system is deliberate: `at for "that," ist for "just," nen for "then," wite for "right." Riley wasn't transcribing real speech—he was creating a readable performance script that suggested rural childhood without becoming incomprehensible. Notice `Lizabuth Ann keeps the Elizabeth intact while dropping the initial vowel, a compromise between dialect authenticity and clarity.

CONTEXT Riley grew up in Greenfield, Indiana in the 1850s-60s, son of a lawyer but fascinated by itinerant workers and local characters. The Raggedy Man represents the hired hands common on small Midwestern farms—transient laborers who did odd jobs for room, board, and small wages. Riley's audience would have recognized this figure immediately: the man too poor or unstable to own land, moving from farm to farm with the seasons.

The Economics of Admiration

The poem's tension lives in the gap between the child's hero-worship and the adult reader's awareness of the Raggedy Man's poverty. The child catalogs menial labor—watering horses, feeding hay, splitting kindling, spading gardens—as evidence of goodness. The father owns a "fine store" and wears "fine clothes," but the child prefers the man who makes bow-and-arrows and tells stories about Giunts (giants) and Griffuns (griffins).

Riley walks a careful line here. He's not romanticizing poverty—the adjective raggedy keeps the man's destitution visible. But he's letting the child see what adults miss: the Raggedy Man gives attention in an era when middle-class fathers were increasingly absent, building businesses while hired help raised children. The child doesn't understand he's choosing poverty over prosperity; he's choosing presence over absence.

The final stanza's question—"what air you go' to be?"—comes from the Raggedy Man himself, who laughs at the child's answer. Does he laugh because it's absurd? Because it's touching? Riley leaves that ambiguous, letting adult readers supply the melancholy his child narrator can't perceive.