The Legend of Sleepy Hollow


The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is an 1820 short story by American author Washington Irving contained in his collection of 34 essays and short stories titled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Irving wrote the story while living in Birmingham, England.
Along with Irving's companion piece Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is among the earliest examples of American fiction with enduring appeal, especially during Halloween. Irving's early literary success with The Sketch Book established his career, providing the financial means to support both himself and his family as a professional writer. The Legend has remained continuously in print since its initial publication and is arguably Irving's most popular work.
It has been adapted for the screen several times, including a 1922 silent film and a 1949 Walt Disney animation as one of two segments in the package film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.

Plot

The story is set in 1790 in the countryside near the former Dutch settlement of Tarrytown, in a secluded glen known as Sleepy Hollow. It relates the tale of Ichabod Crane, a lean, lanky, superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut. Ichabod intends to woo Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a wealthy farmer, in order to procure her family's riches for himself. He competes for her affection with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy. Unable to goad Ichabod into fighting for Katrina's hand, Brom instead wages a campaign of harassment against the schoolmaster, plaguing him with a series of pranks and practical jokes.
One autumn night, Ichabod is invited to attend a harvest party at the Van Tassel homestead and travels there on a borrowed plow horse named Gunpowder. At the party, his social skills easily outdo those of Brom Bones. One of the ghostly stories told during the course of the evening is that of the Headless Horseman, the notorious ghost of a Hessian trooper decapitated by a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. The Horseman is supposedly buried in a churchyard in Sleepy Hollow and rises from his grave every night to search for his missing head, but according to the stories is supernaturally barred from crossing a wooden bridge near the old church that spans a nearby stream.
At the conclusion of the party, Ichabod remains behind to make his proposal to Katrina, but she apparently rejects him. He leaves the party crestfallen and rides home. After a few frightening incidents during the journey, he encounters a cloaked rider and believes it to be the Headless Horseman. Ichabod rides for his life with the apparition close behind. At the bridge, the Horseman rears up on his horse and hurls his severed head directly at Crane, knocking him off Gunpowder.
The next morning, Gunpowder is found eating the grass at his master's gate, but Ichabod has disappeared from the area, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones. Although the nature of Ichabod's disappearance is left open to interpretation, it is implied that Brom knows more about the incident than he ever lets on. A shattered pumpkin is found near Ichabod's hat where he fell, suggesting that the severed head thrown at him was merely a jack-o'-lantern, and that Crane survived the fall from Gunpowder and fled Sleepy Hollow partly out of fear but also because of his humiliating dismissal by Katrina.
In a postscript, a Mr. Knickerbocker recounts hearing the tale at a Corporation meeting in Manhattan, narrated by a humorous, shabby gentleman. The story ends with mixed reactions from the audience, including laughter and skepticism. A serious old gentleman questions the moral of the story, to which the storyteller humorously responds that the tale proves life's situations have their advantages if one can find humor in them. The old gentleman remains puzzled, and the storyteller admits he doesn't believe half of the story himself.

Background

The story was the longest one published as part of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., issued as a serial by Irving, using the pseudonym "Geoffrey Crayon", throughout 1819 and 1820. Irving wrote The Sketch Book during a tour of Europe, and parts of the tale may also be traced to European origins. Headless horsemen were staples of northern Europe storytelling, featured in German, Irish, Scandinavian, and British legends, and included in Robert Burns's Scots poem "Tam o' Shanter" and Gottfried August Bürger's Der Wilde Jäger, translated as The Wild Huntsman. Usually viewed as omens of ill fortune for those who chose to disregard their apparitions, these specters found their victims in proud, scheming persons and characters with hubris and arrogance. One particularly influential rendition of this folktale is the last of the "Legenden von Rübezahl" from Johann Karl August Musäus's literary retellings of German folktales, Volksmärchen der Deutschen.
After the Battle of White Plains in October 1776, the country south of the Bronx River was abandoned by the Continental Army and occupied by the British. The Americans were fortified north of Peekskill, leaving Westchester County a stretch of "neutral ground"—scorched and desolated no-man's-land, vulnerable to outlaws, raiders, and vigilantes. Besides droves of Loyalist rangers and British light infantry, Hessian Jägers—renowned sharpshooters and horsemen—were among the raiders who often skirmished with Patriot militias. The Headless Horseman may have indeed been based, at least in part, on the rumored discovery of a headless corpse in the Sleepy Hollow area after the Battle of White Plains, later allegedly buried in an unmarked grave in the Old Dutch Burying Ground.
According to another hypothesis, Irving could have drawn the figure of the "headless rider" from German Silesian literature, precisely from the Chronicle of Sprottau by J.G. Kreis, written in the first half of the 19th century. In the 19th century, the police counselor Kreis noted that, in the previous century, the inhabitants of this city were afraid to move after dusk on Hospitalstrasse due to the headless rider apparition seen there.
In support of the hypothesis, according to information in Polish Reception of Washington Irving's Work: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism by Zofia Sinko, Walter Scott encouraged Irving to learn German to be able to read stories, ballads, and legends in their native language.
Irving, while he was an aide-de-camp to New York Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, met an army captain named Ichabod Crane in Sackets Harbor, New York, during an inspection tour of fortifications in 1814. Irving may have patterned the character after Jesse Merwin, who taught at the local schoolhouse in Kinderhook, further north along the Hudson River, where Irving spent several months in 1809. Alternatively, it is claimed by many in the Tarrytown area that Samuel Youngs, a local schoolteacher and Irving's friend, is the individual from whom Irving drew his character. Author Gary Denniss asserts that while Crane is loosely based on Merwin, it may include elements from Youngs's life.
The names of local residents who may have served as inspirations for Katrina and her name, as well as for Brom Bones, Baltus Van Tassel, and the “High German witch doctor” are all found on gravestones in the historic Burying Ground of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. Creating a unique literary landmark, Washington Irving's own final resting place is also located there, just 150 feet away from the graves of those who inspired his characters, in the oldest part of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, abutting the Burial Ground.
The local landmarks, Raven Rock and Spook Rock in what is now Rockefeller State Park Preserve, are also associated with locations mentioned in The Legend, as are the Old Dutch Church and Philipsburg Manor House, the latter standing in for the home of Katrina Van Tassel.
With Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of Irving's most anthologized, studied, and adapted sketches. Both stories are often paired together in books and other representations, and both are included in surveys of early American literature and Romanticism. Irving's depictions of regional culture and themes of progress versus tradition, supernatural intervention in the commonplace, and the plight of the individual outsider in a homogeneous community permeate both stories and helped develop a unique sense of American cultural and existential selfhood during the early 19th century.

Adaptations

Film

  • The Headless Horseman, a silent film directed by Edward Venturini and starring Will Rogers as Ichabod Crane
  • The Headless Horseman, an animated short film directed by Ub Iwerks. The short depicts the horseman as merely a story, with Brom Bones pranking and frightening Ichabod Crane away from Katrina Van Tassel. The film somewhat departs from the original ending by showing Ichabod getting his revenge, dressing up as the Headless Horseman, and crashing Brom and Katrina's wedding.
  • The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, an animated adaptation directed by James Algar, Clyde Geronimi, and Jack Kinney, produced by Walt Disney Productions, and narrated by Bing Crosby. This version is more lighthearted and family-friendly than Irving's original story and most other adaptations.
  • Sleepy Hollow, a feature film adaption directed by Tim Burton. Unlike the original story and other movie adaptations, this film has a happy ending for Ichabod with him and Katrina ending up together.

    Literature

  • The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel: A Story of Sleepy Hollow by Alyssa Palombo, published in 2018. A re-telling of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in which Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel actually fall in love, but after Ichabod mysteriously vanishes Katrina is determined to discover the truth about his disappearance.
  • Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow by Christina Henry, a fictional horror novel published in 2021. It takes place in Sleepy Hollow three decades after the events of the original story and is told from the point of view of teenager Ben Van Brunt, the only grandchild of Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt and Katrina Van Tassel.
  • The Unhallowed Horseman by Jude S. Walko, a gothic horror novel published in 2021, with a foreword by noted chronicler of Hudson Valley lore Jonathan Kruk. The modern day town of Sleepy Hollow is cursed during the Triduum of the Hallows. while direct descendants of Washington Irving's original characters are reimagined in contemporary times. They must fight off the sins of their forefathers, and the Headless Horseman himself. Voted AudioBookReviewer's 2024 Gothic Horror Novel of the Year.
  • Hollow and Legend by Karina Halle, a fictional gothic romance duology published in 2023. In this retelling, Katrina Van Tassell is a witch attending Sleepy Hollow Institute, where Ichabod Crane is a professor. Brom Bones is her former betrothed with a dark secret.
  • Raven Rock by Nichole Louise, a prequel to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, published in 2023.