"The Bandit" is a short poem by L. Frank Baum. It was included in his collection Father Goose (1899), and re-appeared in musical form in The Songs of Father Goose (1900).
The poem celebrates the stereotypical bandit of folklore and opera:
- The Bandit is a handsome man,
- In operas he sings;
- He wears a wig and fierce mustache
- And many other things.
- He looks just like a robber bold,
- When on the stage he stands.
- Real bandits lived in times of old,
- In distant, foreign lands.
W. W. Denslow's illustrations show the bandit and three henchmen equipped with daggers, pistols, and a blunderbuss.
Baum employs such stereotypical Italianate bandits elsewhere in his works — as in his story "The Box of Robbers," one of the American Fairy Tales (1901). Sicilian brigands play an important role in Baum's novel Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad (1907).