| rdfs:comment | - Mary Alice Smith, a.k.a. Little Orphant Allie, is an orphan child who helps keep house for the kind family who have taken her in, and when work is done, tells chilling horror stories to her younger housemates. In her first appearance (“Where Is Mary Alice Smith?,” 1882), she tells the children a grisly story of murder by decapitation and then later introduces them to her soldier friend Dave who is soon killed upon going off to war. In her second appearance (“The Elf Child,” 1885), she tells them horror stories of misbehaving children who are abducted by goblins. According to Wikipedia, the character is popular with Indiana children, particularly at Halloween.
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| abstract | - Mary Alice Smith, a.k.a. Little Orphant Allie, is an orphan child who helps keep house for the kind family who have taken her in, and when work is done, tells chilling horror stories to her younger housemates. In her first appearance (“Where Is Mary Alice Smith?,” 1882), she tells the children a grisly story of murder by decapitation and then later introduces them to her soldier friend Dave who is soon killed upon going off to war. In her second appearance (“The Elf Child,” 1885), she tells them horror stories of misbehaving children who are abducted by goblins. According to Wikipedia, the character is popular with Indiana children, particularly at Halloween. Reprints of the 1885 poem from 1889 on render the character’s name as Orphant Annie, by which she has become much better known and is her name in the derivative movie and storybook (Orphant is regional Indiana pronunciation of orphan or orphaned). The 1918 movie Little Orphant Annie indicates that she had previously told her scary stories to fellow orphans in an orphanage, depicts her unfortunate family situation before moving to her benefactors’ home and illustrates two of her stories. In 1921, author Johnny Gruelle further expanded Annie’s origin story in The Orphant Annie Story Book, which depicts in greater detail the winter day of her arrival at her benefactor family’s home. Gruelle goes to great lengths to cast a magic fairylike glow about her, describing her, for example, as “a strange, mysterious, fancy‐filled little girl” who “seemed to come direct from the Land of Fairies” and who “seemed a creature … whose place was with Gnomes and Elves as they formed their Fairy Rings and danced in the shimmering moonlight.” In addition to horror stories, she also tells much less frightening stories about fairies, gnomes, magicians and anthropomorphic animals.
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