THREE OF THE MOST FAMOUS RILEY PRANKS

plus UNAWANGAWAWA

     Riley contributed heavily to the folklore of Indiana with his famous pranks pulled as a restless young man traveling about Indiana as a sign painter, contributor to a traveling medicine show, bible salesman and other temporary endeavors in the years after the American Civil War.

THE BLIND PAINTER PRANK

The "blind painter" prank occurred in August, 1872 with his traveling friends- also itinerant craftsmen or vagrants calling themselves "The Graphics" - who knew of Riley's genius for mimicry. The group decided to have some fun with the town folk of Peru, Indiana. The young men hinted around town that a "blind sign painter" was outside trying to paint a sign on a building. Soon half the town came out to witness. How could a blind man paint a sign? Riley assumed the patient, weary look of a blind man, groping about and upsetting a can of paint, whereupon his associates jeered him and made terrible fun of him. Then another would say, "Look at that poor blind man. Isn't it a shame the way folks make fun of him!" In the meantime, Riley climbed the ladder, fumbled for a few minutes, and, at last, without laying out the letters, as a sign painter customarily did, he produced a beautifully done free-hand sign on the side of the building while his friends laughed and poked each other below. In the meantime, people chirped, "He isn't blind! How could he do that if he were blind!" while the Graphics solemnly insisted, "Oh, yes he is!" This Riley, the "blind sign painter," was classic Riley.

THE VOICE FROM THE CELLAR PRANK

My favorite prank performed by Riley was done with John Hoover in the town of Lafayette, Indiana in the heat of summer of 1874. Bill Moore, hot and fat, plodded the main street which was baking in a scorching sun. In front of the dry goods store, a pleading voice reached his ear. "Bill, help, Bill! Lift up the cellar door. I am trapped in the cellar. I can't see in here!" Bill put his hands under the cellar door and tugged and pulled and teased but the cellar door failed to move when along came another person, Lee Trees. Lee was wearing a new white suit and was the town "dandy." "Lee, Lee. Help!" the voice called out from the cellar. "Please lift up the cellar door. I'm in here and I can't get out." Both men pulled and tugged and teased. Dripping with perspiration they went inside the dry goods store and came out with  candles to look through a window into the dark cellar. They saw that the cellar door was locked with chains from the inside. When they went back into the dry goods store, the merchant scratched his head and rocked on his heels and said he didn't know how anyone could get down there in the first place. Then, from next door in the hardware store, they heard James Whitcomb Riley and John Hoover laughing hysterically and holding their sides. Upon further investigation they found Riley holding a hose the other end of which went through an iron grating and down into the cellar. The voice from the cellar door came from the lips of James Whitcomb Riley in the hardware store through the hose. Riley was just having some fun.

TAKE RADWAY'S READY RELIEF PRANK

I should add that Riley himself was not simply pranking playing Riley, he was also surviving in the character role. Sometimes the two mixed. There is a story of Riley, while a young man traveling through the countryside painting signs. On a new gate between Kennard and New Castle,Indiana, Riley noticed a farmer had displayed on its top board: "What will you do to be saved?  With no one in sight, Riley painted underneath it, "Take Radway's Ready Relief!" This was a common laxative of the time. Some days later, he passed the same farm and on the bottom board the farmer had added, "And prepare to meet thy God!"

     Riley had a lot of this "prankster" in his poetry. His greatest writing is found in the "Poetical Gymnastics" series and "Respectably Declined Papers of the Buzz Club" series published originally in the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD. This body of Riley's work represents Riley in unburdened creativity and mischievous orientation. In these great series, Riley writes the poem "On Quitting California." No, this poem is not about moving away from the great Pacific coastal state. It is about giving up a "California" brand of cheap "red- eye" whiskey. Riley is quitting a crummy brand -not giving up alcohol entirely. Cleverness and humor are marks of Riley. Riley is the usual story teller. There seems to be an easy, casual and honest relationship between Riley and Riley. Occasionally one finds Riley lapsing into the "dots" and "disses" of his native Hoosier Deutsch culture. Here is one of Riley's stories from his "Buzz Club" writings.

UNAWANGAWAWA; OR, THE EYELASH OF THE LIGHTNING (1878).

It was the noble red man, from the land of the setting sun, in company with some half dozen members of his tribe,

under management of "Captain Rigby Knowles," who, as the big bills went on to state, had been "nine years a captive among the wild, untutored wanderers of the western wilderness," and was now "a missionary, disseminating knowledge, and the advantages of education, to his dusky brothers, as well as enlightening the civilized world regarding the manners and customs of the poor Indian." They were billed to show "for one night only," at the one church in our little village, the Thursday evening prayer meeting having been postponed for their accommodation, and

"the clergy" complimented. I shall never forget their visit to our school that afternoon, for I was then a lad of ten or thereabout; so I leave you to infer the aching sense of my own inferiority as they stalked stoically into the school room, in full bloom of war-paint, wampum, bead moccasins and feathers, and headed by the redoubtable "Captain Rigby Knowles" himself, looking, for the world, like an enlarged facsimile of the "Daniel Boone" in Monteith's geography, only excepting the melancholy and the deceased deer at his feet. The arithmetic class, in fractions, hurried to its seat, and the silence of death fell upon the room, while the blanched faces of the "scholars" contrasted vividly with those of their tawny visitors as "the famed interpreter and guide," after a wheezy conversation with the teacher, in which the latter only nodded his head submissively at every proposition - seized suddenly hold of a stalwart warrior, and with the bloodcurdling remark of "Pombee steel-ah da be-bee wah-wah!" or words to that effect, wheeled him before us with the following introduction:

"He iss a big chief. He come to make some talk wiss you. He iss a much, heap, smart man. He will make you big Injun speech dot you don't could understand, and den we told you w'as he say. He no talk white talk. He on'y talk much very Injun. He talk Choctaw - he talk Mohawk - he talk Chippavay - he talk effry all style of Injun talk, on'y he no talk white talk. He iss awful smart! Me talk, like big chief, effry all style of Injun-talk, on'y me talk United States also. He iss - O, he iss awful smart, big, very, posted Injun gentlemans. Now he iss go to speak big Injun speech, unt den I say it explain, so dot you know wass he say." Then, turning to the big chief, he touched him off with the following fuse: "De ah-ghee-ghah bee- gah wah-way!" at which the chief at once opened fire in deep, lazy guttural, accompanying the utterance with that facial contortion indicative of an acute attack of cholera morbus. This incoherent mastication had occupied but a brief interval of time when the interpreter jerked the tail of the warrior's shawl, and with a spasmodic "Chow," and a "Ching-ching," he stopped as abruptly as a German music-box. The interpreter explained:

"He say dot you must oxcuse him - dot he don't know he was go to speak. He say dot he ain't much fix on the de subjec', but dot he try to drop some small, leedle, few remarks dot come to hiss mind." Then, prodding the big chief between the shoulders with a rigid thumb, the noble red man lumbered off again in a complexity of verbal chow-chow that put the listener's ears on edge, and thrilled the speculative fancy with a nameless dread, as the ever-widening stream of conglomerated eloquence dashed into savage meaning, fiercely defined by gestures that swung invisible war-clubs, hurled tomahawks, and manipulated the gory scalping-knife. And it was sometime before the fearless interpreter could check this impassioned burst. He had jerked at the tail of the warrior's shawl like a school-boy at the string of a limber- ack, and with pretty much the same result. The "scholars" were wild- eyed, and pale with fright. The teacher had one leg thrown carelessly over the window sill, and with an air of careless indifference was pruning his trembling nails with the big blade of his knife, while the girls in actual terror hid their pallid faces behind their desk-lids, and pencils and pen-holders rained from their places, some, piercing with their barbed points the floor, stood bolt upright and quivered with affright. It was a critical moment for us all; but the daring interpreter, with a presence of mind worth a Van Amburg, threw open his blouse, disclosing a magic something lurking in an inner pocket which the savage reached for with a pacified "Ugh! give some, me dry up!" while the small boys whispered they bet it was a pistol! They bet he'd killed lots o' Indians! They bet he wasn't afraid!, etc. etc. And so we listened with unusual interest as the interpreter explained: "You mustn't don't get sceert: he won't hurt noting. He wass on'y yoost say dot he for hissef iss sorry dot he don't gone to school when he wass been a leedle childrens like you. But he say when he was leedle like dot, he roll unt dumble in de grass, unt go mitout hiss clothes, unt kick hiss heels like a jaybird. He say dot he not got some advantages ober he would gone to school now off he wass a leedle boy wonce. He was yoost told you how he wass a leedle poor Injun boy, unt don't gone to Sunday school. He say when he wass leedle, heap, awful naughty Injun boy he wass one time play mit hiss leedle brutters mit seesters in de big wasser, unt he want to comed out unt dey  wont let um, unt sling um wiss mud, unt dot make um heap-much-brave, so dot he kill um unt scalp um. Den when he goned home his folks dey said: "Where iss your leedle brutters unt seesters?" Unt he say: "Dey at de swimmin-hole." Unt when gone to found um, dey all was scalped unt dead, unt dey hands cut off, unt dey nose cut off, unt dey ears unt eyes cut off. Den hiss folks say: "Who wass done it?" Unt he say: "I don't could lied about it; I do it wiss my leedle hatchet!" Unt den his folks dey say: "Dot's goot! Dot boy will been on de war- ath ober he been twelf moons of age!" Unt den he say dot make um feel like big warrior, so dot he can't wait, unt got impulsiff, unt kill also de rest of his folks, unt gone on de war- ath unt kill heap-much of ladies unt gentlemens. But he say dot he won't done it now - dot he iss sorry cos off he would a saved his leedle brutters unt seester he would took um to Sunday school wiss um. "Ugh gee bebah wah-wah!" This concluding sentence of the interpreter, abruptly addressed to the warrior, evidently conveyed to him instructions to simmer down, and close his peroration in some conciliatory and complimentary fashion, for the noble savage smiled like a genial hippopotamus, and thumped his breast like a bass drum. His remarks now seemed to be particularly addressed to the fairer portion of his audience, and his gesticulation at was so palpably indicative of love and affection the big girls blushed and giggled, and the small boys whistled aloud. Only once did he cause a tremor of trepidation to thrill the bosoms of his gentle auditors, when in a triumphant burst he tossed his arms aloft, an, with a glory of inspiration lighting up his dusky features, gave vent to the impassioned utterance, "Shoot-pop-bang!" and then, shortly after, he drew his shawl tightly about him, slapped his chest so vehemently it jarred a feather from his head-gear, and, with the pompous exclamation, "Me big chief, wah!" he folded his arms, and stood stoical and silent. The interpreter, quivering with an inward paroxysm, after prefacing the interpretation with the chuckling observation, "Bet you don't know whas he say!" went on in this wise" "Well he say dot he would like to marry a few off you girls. You notice he hold up hiss hand like dot? Well, dot mean five; he say he would like to marry five off you girls. You notice he hold up de also both hands? Well, dot mean dot he would have ten wife - off de both kind - five injun, unt five white squaw. He say he tink dot make things lifely off his domestics unt hiss leedle quiet wigwam. He say dot off you marry him he make you all a good husband, unt dot he took you to de land of de setting sun, where you to do nothing - only yoost work. He say he will done all de huntin' hisself, unt dot he will "shoot-pop-bang," like he say, de mussrat unt possum, unt cath um by the tail unt bring um home; den all you had to done wass build de fire, unt peel um, unt cook yoost a leedle, unt he will eat um. Den he say he will give you all de rest. He say you will suit de climate - he say it iss so healdy dot you live more as a hundred years old off you gone wiss him once, unt a tree don't fall on you. He say it iss so healdy out dere dot hiss grandpa iss livin' yet, unt he iss over four tousand year old, unt ain't a gray hair in his head. He say dey also no hair in his head. He say he chaw tobacker all hiss life unt don't hurt um. He say he is healdy dot you wouldn't know um off you see um. He say dot you got in for fifteen cent, unt de leedle children's five cent tonight at de meetin' house."

THE "POET/FUNSTER" IN PERSPECTIVE

As Riley's spiritually attuned soul has friends who are ministers, primarily Myron Reed and Robert Burdette, or fellow kenotics such as Lew Wallace author of "Ben Hur," as his despairing self knows fellow alcoholics such as James McClanahan, Clint Hamilton, and Luther Benson, as Riley's "public" persona has friends who are establishment figures such as Dr. Wycliffe Smith, Booth Tarkington and President Benjamin Harrison, Riley's friends as "the prankster" are the mischievous and daring nonconformists and "funsters" friends such as John Skinner, Bill Nye and Mark Twain.