THE LEGEND
OF
SLEEPY HOLLOW
By
Washington Irving
About Washington Irving
About the author
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783
– November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian
of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which
appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical
works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad,
and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as
Christopher Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra. Irving also served as the
U.S. minister to Spain from 1842 to 1846.
Irving in 1809
He made his literary debut in
1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle, written
under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. After moving to England for the family
business in 1815, he achieved international fame with the publication of The
Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819. He continued to publish
regularly—and almost always successfully—throughout his life, and completed a
five-volume biography of George Washington just eight months before his death,
at age 76, in Tarrytown, New York.
Irving, along with James Fenimore Cooper, was
among the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving
encouraged American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving was also admired by some
European writers, including Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell,
Francis Jeffrey, and Charles Dickens. As America's first genuine
internationally best-selling author, Irving advocated for writing as a
legitimate profession, and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers
from copyright infringement.
Washington Irving's parents were William
Irving, Sr., originally of Quholm, Shapinsay, Orkney and Sarah (née Sanders),
Scottish-English immigrants. They married in 1761 while William was serving as
a petty officer in the British Navy. They had eleven children, eight of whom
survived to adulthood. Their first two sons, each named William, died in
infancy, as did their fourth child, John. Their surviving children were:
William, Jr. (1766), Ann (1770), Peter (1772), Catherine (1774), Ebenezer
(1776), John Treat (1778), Sarah (1780), and Washington.
The Irving family was settled in Manhattan,
New York City as part of the city's small, vibrant merchant class when
Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783, the same week city residents
learned of the British ceasefire that ended the American Revolution; Irving’s
mother named him after the hero of the revolution, George Washington. At age
six, with the help of a nanny, Irving met his namesake, who was then living in
New York after his inauguration as president in 1789. The president blessed
young Irving, an encounter Irving later commemorated in a small watercolor
painting, which still hangs in his home today. Several of Washington Irving's
older brothers became active New York merchants, and they encouraged their
younger brother's literary aspirations, often supporting him financially as he
pursued his writing career.
An uninterested student, Irving preferred
adventure stories and drama and, by age fourteen, was regularly sneaking out of
class in the evenings to attend the theater. The 1798 outbreak of yellow fever in Manhattan
prompted his family to send him to healthier climes upriver, and Irving was
dispatched to stay with his friend James Kirke Paulding in Tarrytown, New York.
It was in Tarrytown that Irving became familiar with the nearby town of Sleepy
Hollow, with its quaint Dutch customs and local ghost stories. Irving made
several other trips up the Hudson as a teenager, including an extended visit to
Johnstown, New York, where he passed through the Catskill mountain region, the
setting for "Rip Van Winkle". "[O]f all the scenery of the
Hudson", Irving wrote later, "the Kaatskill Mountains had the most
witching effect on my boyish imagination".
The 19-year old Irving began writing letters
to the New York Morning Chronicle in 1802, submitting commentaries on the
city's social and theater scene under the name of Jonathan Oldstyle. The name,
which purposely evoked the writer's Federalist leanings, was the first of many
pseudonyms Irving would employ throughout his career. The letters brought
Irving some early fame and moderate notoriety. Aaron Burr, a co-publisher of
the Chronicle, was impressed enough to send clippings of the Oldstyle pieces to
his daughter, Theodosia, while writer Charles Brockden Brown made a trip to New
York to recruit Oldstyle for a literary magazine he was editing in
Philadelphia.
Concerned for his health, Irving's brothers
financed an extended tour of Europe from 1804 to 1806. Irving bypassed most of
the sites and locations considered essential for the development of an
upwardly-mobile young man, to the dismay of his brother William. William wrote
that, though he was pleased his brother's health was improving, he did not like
the choice to "gallop through Italy... leaving Florence on your left and
Venice on your right". Instead, Irving honed the social and conversational
skills that would later make him one of the world's most in-demand guests.
"I endeavor to take things as they come with cheerfulness", Irving
wrote, "and when I cannot get a dinner to suit my taste, I endeavor to get
a taste to suit my dinner".
Washington Allston
While visiting Rome in 1805,
Irving struck up a friendship with the American painter Washington Allston, and
nearly allowed himself to be persuaded into following Allston into a career as
a painter. "My lot in life, however", Irving said later, "was
differently cast".
Irving returned from Europe to study law with
his legal mentor, Judge Josiah Ogden Hoffman, in New York City. By his own
admission, he was not a good student, and barely passed the bar in 1806. Irving
began actively socializing with a group of literate young men he dubbed
"The Lads of Kilkenny". Collaborating with his brother William and
fellow Lad James Kirke Paulding, Irving created the literary magazine
Salmagundi in January 1807. Writing under various pseudonyms, such as William
Wizard and Launcelot Langstaff, Irving lampooned New York culture and politics
in a manner similar to today's Mad magazine. Salmagundi was a moderate success,
spreading Irving's name and reputation beyond New York. In its seventeenth
issue, dated November 11, 1807, Irving affixed the nickname
"Gotham"—an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "Goat's Town"—to New
York City.
Irving’s home in New York
In late 1809, while mourning the death of his
seventeen year old fiancée Matilda Hoffman, Irving completed work on his first
major book, A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of
the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809), a satire on self-important
local history and contemporary politics. Prior to its publication, Irving
started a hoax akin to today's viral marketing campaigns; he placed a series of
missing person adverts in New York newspapers seeking information on Diedrich
Knickerbocker, a crusty Dutch historian who had allegedly gone missing from his
hotel in New York City. As part of the ruse, Irving placed a notice—allegedly
from the hotel's proprietor—informing readers that if Mr. Knickerbocker failed
to return to the hotel to pay his bill, he would publish a manuscript
Knickerbocker had left behind.
Unsuspecting readers followed the
story of Knickerbocker and his manuscript with interest, and some New York City
officials were concerned enough about the missing historian that they
considered offering a reward for his safe return. Riding the wave of public
interest he had created with his hoax, Irving—adopting the pseudonym of his
Dutch historian—published A History of New York on December 6, 1809, to
immediate critical and popular success. "It took with the public",
Irving remarked, "and gave me celebrity, as an original work was something
remarkable and uncommon in America". Today, the surname of Diedrich Knickerbocker,
the fictional narrator of this and other Irving works, has become a nickname
for Manhattan residents in general.
After the success of A History of New York,
Irving searched for a job and eventually became an editor of Analectic
magazine, where he wrote biographies of naval heroes like James Lawrence and
Oliver Perry. He was also among the first magazine editors to reprint Francis
Scott Key's poem "Defense of Fort McHenry", which would later be
immortalized as "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of
the United States.
Daniel Tompkins
Like many merchants and New Yorkers, Irving
originally opposed the War of 1812, but the British attack on Washington, D.C.
in 1814 convinced him to enlist. He served on the staff of Daniel Tompkins, governor
of New York and commander of the New York State Militia. Apart from a
reconnaissance mission in the Great Lakes region, he saw no real action. The war was disastrous for many American
merchants, including Irving's family, and in mid-1815 he left for England to
attempt to salvage the family trading company. He remained in Europe for the
next seventeen years.
Irving spent the next two years trying to bail
out the family firm financially but was eventually forced to declare
bankruptcy.] With no job prospects, Irving continued writing throughout 1817
and 1818. In the summer of 1817, he visited the home of novelist Walter Scott,
marking the beginning of a lifelong personal and professional friendship for
both men. Irving continued writing prolifically—the short story "Rip Van
Winkle" was written overnight while staying with his sister Sarah and her
husband, Henry van Wart in Birmingham, England, a place that also inspired some
of his other works. In October 1818,
Irving's brother William secured for Irving a post as chief clerk to the United
States Navy, and urged him to return home. Irving, however, turned the offer
down, opting to stay in England to pursue a writing career.
Rip Van Winkle
In the spring of 1819, Irving sent to his
brother Ebenezer in New York a set of essays that he asked be published as The
Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. The first installment, containing
"Rip Van Winkle", was an enormous success, and the rest of the work
would be equally successful: it was published over the course of 1819-1820 in
seven installments in New York and in two volumes in London ("The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow" would appear in the sixth issue of the New York edition
and the second volume of the London edition).
Like many successful authors of this era,
Irving struggled against literary bootleggers. In England, some of his sketches
were reprinted in periodicals without his permission, an entirely legal
practice as there was no international copyright law at the time. To prevent
further piracy in Britain, Irving paid to have the first four American
installments published as a single volume by John Miller in London. Irving
appealed to Walter Scott for help procuring a more reputable publisher for the
remainder of the book. Scott referred Irving to his own publisher, London
powerhouse John Murray, who agreed to take on The Sketch Book. From then on,
Irving would publish concurrently in the United States and England to protect
his copyright, with Murray being his English publisher of choice.
Irving's reputation soared, and for the next
two years, he led an active social life in Paris and England, where he was
often feted as an anomaly of literature: an upstart American who dared to write
English well.
With both Irving and publisher John Murray
eager to follow up on the success of The Sketch Book, Irving spent much of 1821
travelling in Europe in search of new material, reading widely in Dutch and
German folk tales. Hampered by writer's block—and depressed by the death of his
brother William—Irving worked slowly, finally delivering a completed manuscript
to Murray in March 1822. The book, Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists, A Medley
(the location was based loosely on Aston Hall, occupied by members of the
Bracebridge family, near his sister's home in Birmingham) was published in June
1822.
The format of Bracebridge was similar to that
of The Sketch Book, with Irving, as Crayon, narrating a series of more than
fifty loosely connected short stories and essays. While some reviewers thought
Bracebridge to be a lesser imitation of The Sketch Book, the book was
well-received by readers and critics. "We have received so much pleasure
from this book," wrote critic Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review,
"that we think ourselves bound in gratitude . . . to make a public
acknowledgement of it." Irving was relieved at its reception, which did
much to cement his reputation with European readers.
Still struggling with writer's block, Irving
traveled to Germany, settling in Dresden in the winter of 1822. Here he dazzled
the royal family and attached himself to Mrs. Amelia Foster, an American living
in Dresden with her five children. Irving was particularly attracted to Mrs.
Foster's 18-year-old daughter Emily, and vied in frustration for her hand.
Emily finally refused his offer of marriage in the spring of 1823.
He returned to Paris and began collaborating
with playwright John Howard Payne on translations of French plays for the
English stage, with little success. He also learned through Payne that the
novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was romantically interested in him, though
Irving never pursued the relationship.
In August 1824, Irving published the
collection of essays Tales of a Traveller—including the short story "The
Devil and Tom Walker"—under his Geoffrey Crayon persona. "I think
there are in it some of the best things I have ever written," Irving told
his sister. But while the book sold respectably, Traveller largely bombed with
critics, who panned both Traveller and its author. "The public have been
led to expect better things," wrote the United States Literary Gazette,
while the New-York Mirror pronounced Irving "overrated." Hurt and
depressed by the book's reception, Irving retreated to Paris where he spent the
next year worrying about finances and scribbling down ideas for projects that
never materialized.
While in Paris, Irving received a letter from
Alexander Hill Everett on January 30, 1826. Everett, recently the American
Minister to Spain, urged Irving to join him in Madrid, noting that a number of
manuscripts dealing with the Spanish conquest of the Americas had recently been
made public. Irving left for Madrid and enthusiastically began scouring the
Spanish archives for colorful material.
With full access to the American consul's
massive library of Spanish history, Irving began working on several books at
once. The first offspring of this hard work, The Life and Voyages of
Christopher Columbus, was published in January 1828. The book was popular in
the United States and in Europe and would have 175 editions published before
the end of the century. It was also the first project of Irving's to be
published with his own name, instead of a pseudonym, on the title page. The
Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada was published a year later, followed by
Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus in 1831.
Irving's writings on Columbus are a mixture of
history and fiction, a genre now called romantic history/historical fiction.
Irving based them on extensive research in the Spanish archives, but also added
imaginative elements aimed at sharpening the story. The first of these works is
the source of the durable myth that medieval Europeans believed the Earth was
flat.
In 1829, Irving moved into Granada's ancient
palace Alhambra, "determined to linger here", he said, "until I
get some writings under way connected with the place". Before he could get
any significant writing underway, however, he was notified of his appointment
as Secretary to the American Legation in London. Worried he would disappoint
friends and family if he refused the position, Irving left Spain for England in
July 1829.
Arriving in London, Irving joined the staff of
American Minister Louis McLane. McLane immediately assigned the daily secretary
work to another man and tapped Irving to fill the role of aide-de-camp. The two
worked over the next year to negotiate a trade agreement between the United
States and the British West Indies, finally reaching a deal in August 1830. That
same year, Irving was awarded a medal by the Royal Society of Literature,
followed by an honorary doctorate of civil law from Oxford in 1831.
Following McLane's recall to the United States
in 1831 to serve as Secretary of Treasury, Irving stayed on as the legation's
chargé d'affaires until the arrival of Martin Van Buren, President Andrew
Jackson's nominee for British Minister. With Van Buren in place, Irving
resigned his post to concentrate on writing, eventually completing Tales of the
Alhambra, which would be published concurrently in the United States and
England in 1832.
Irving was still in London when Van Buren
received word that the United States Senate had refused to confirm him as the
new Minister. Consoling Van Buren, Irving predicted that the Senate's partisan
move would backfire. "I should not be surprised", Irving said,
"if this vote of the Senate goes far toward elevating him to the
presidential chair".
Washington Irving arrived in New
York, after seventeen years abroad on May 21, 1832. That September, he
accompanied the U.S. Commissioner on Indian Affairs, Henry Leavitt Ellsworth,
along with companions Charles La Trobe and Count Albert-Alexandre de Pourtales,
on a surveying mission deep in Indian Territory. At the completion of his
western tour, Irving traveled through Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, where he
became acquainted with the politician and novelist John Pendleton Kennedy.
Frustrated by bad investments, Irving turned
to writing to generate additional income, beginning with A Tour on the
Prairies, a work which related his recent travels on the frontier. The book was
another popular success and also the first book written and published by Irving
in the United States since A History of New York in 1809. In 1834, he was
approached by fur magnate John Jacob Astor, who convinced Irving to write a
history of his fur trading colony in the American Northwest, now known as
Astoria, Oregon. Irving made quick work of Astor's project, shipping the
fawning biographical account titled Astoria in February 1836.
During an extended stay at Astor's, Irving met
the explorer Benjamin Bonneville, who intrigued Irving with his maps and
stories of the territories beyond the Rocky Mountains. When the two met in
Washington, D.C. several months later, Bonneville opted to sell his maps and
rough notes to Irving for $1,000. Irving used these materials as the basis for
his 1837 book The Adventures of Captain Bonneville.
These three works made up Irving's
"western" series of books and were written partly as a response to
criticism that his time in England and Spain had made him more European than
American. In the minds of some critics, especially James Fenimore Cooper and
Philip Freneau, Irving had turned his back on his American heritage in favor of
English aristocracy. Irving's western books, particularly A Tour on the
Prairies, were well-received in the United States, though British critics
accused Irving of "book-making".
In 1835, Irving purchased a "neglected
cottage" and its surrounding riverfront property in Tarrytown, New York.
The house, which Irving named Sunnyside in 1841, would require constant repair
and renovation over the next twenty years. With costs of Sunnyside escalating,
Irving reluctantly agreed in 1839 to become a regular contributor to Knickerbocker
magazine, writing new essays and short stories under the Knickerbocker and
Crayon pseudonyms.
Irving was regularly approached
by aspiring young authors for advice or endorsement, including Edgar Allan Poe,
who sought Irving's comments on "William Wilson" and "The Fall
of the House of Usher". Irving also championed America's maturing
literature, advocating for stronger copyright laws to protect writers from the
kind of piracy that had initially plagued The Sketch Book. Writing in the January
1840 issue of Knickerbocker, he openly endorsed copyright legislation pending
in the U.S. Congress. "We have a young literature", Irving wrote,
"springing up and daily unfolding itself with wonderful energy and
luxuriance, which... deserves all its fostering care". The legislation did
not pass.
Irving at this time also began a friendly
correspondence with the English writer Charles Dickens, and hosted the author
and his wife at Sunnyside during Dickens's American tour in 1842.
In 1842, after an endorsement from Secretary
of State Daniel Webster, President John Tyler appointed Irving as Minister to
Spain. Irving was surprised and honored,
writing, "It will be a severe trial to absent myself for a time from my
dear little Sunnyside, but I shall return to it better enabled to carry it on
comfortably".
While Irving hoped his position as Minister
would allow him plenty of time to write, Spain was in a state of perpetual
political upheaval during most of his tenure, with a number of warring factions
vying for control of the twelve-year-old Queen Isabella II. Irving maintained
good relations with the various generals and politicians, as control of Spain
rotated through Espartero, Bravo, then Narvaez. However, the politics and
warfare were exhausting, and Irving—homesick and suffering from a crippling
skin condition—grew quickly disheartened:
I am wearied and at times heartsick of the
wretched politics of this country. . . . The last ten or twelve years of my
life, passed among sordid speculators in the United States, and political
adventurers in Spain, has shewn me so much of the dark side of human nature,
that I begin to have painful doubts of my fellow man; and look back with regret
to the confiding period of my literary career, when, poor as a rat, but rich in
dreams, I beheld the world through the medium of my imagination and was apt to
believe men as good as I wished them to be.”
With the political situation in Spain
relatively settled, Irving continued to closely monitor the development of the
new government and the fate of Isabella. His official duties as Spanish
Minister also involved negotiating American trade interests with Cuba and
following the Spanish parliament's debates over slave trade. He was also
pressed into service by the American Minister to the Court of St. James's in
London, Louis McLane, to assist in negotiating the Anglo-American disagreement
over the Oregon border that newly-elected president James K. Polk had vowed to
resolve.
Returning from Spain in 1846, Irving took up
permanent residence at Sunnyside and began work on an "Author's Revised
Edition" of his works for publisher George Palmer Putnam. For its
publication, Irving had made a deal that guaranteed him 12 percent of the
retail price of all copies sold. Such an agreement was unprecedented at that
time. On the death of John Jacob Astor in 1848, Irving was hired as an executor
of Astor's estate and appointed, by Astor's will, as first chairman of the
Astor library, a forerunner to the New York Public Library.
As he revised his older works for Putnam,
Irving continued to write regularly, publishing biographies of the writer and
poet Oliver Goldsmith in 1849 and the 1850 work about the Islamic prophet
Muhammad. In 1855, he produced Wolfert's Roost, a collection of stories and
essays he had originally written for Knickerbocker and other publications, and
began publishing at intervals a biography of his namesake, George Washington, a
work which he expected to be his masterpiece. Five volumes of the biography
were published between 1855 and 1859. Irving traveled regularly to Mount Vernon
and Washington, D.C. for his research, and struck up friendships with
Presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce.
He continued to socialize and keep up with his
correspondence well into his seventies, and his fame and popularity continued
to soar. "I don’t believe that any man, in any country, has ever had a
more affectionate admiration for him than that given to you in America",
wrote Senator William C. Preston in a letter to Irving. "I believe that we
have had but one man who is so much in the popular heart". By 1859, author
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. noted that Sunnyside had become "next to Mount
Vernon, the best known and most cherished of all the dwellings in our
land".
On the evening of November 28, 1859, only
eight months after completing the final volume of his Washington biography,
Washington Irving died of a heart attack in his bedroom at Sunnyside at the age
of 76. Legend has it that his last words were: "Well, I must arrange my
pillows for another night. When will this end?" He was buried under a
simple headstone at Sleepy Hollow cemetery on December 1, 1859.
Irving and his grave were commemorated by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his 1876 poem, "In The Churchyard at
Tarrytown", which concludes with:
How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death!
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
Of summers full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.
Irving is largely credited as the first
American Man of Letters, and the first to earn his living solely by his pen.
Eulogizing Irving before the Massachusetts Historical Society in December 1859,
his friend, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, acknowledged Irving's role in
promoting American literature: "We feel a just pride in his renown as an
author, not forgetting that, to his other claims upon our gratitude, he adds also
that of having been the first to win for our country an honorable name and
position in the History of Letters".
Irving perfected the American short story, and
was the first American writer to place his stories firmly in the United States,
even as he poached from German or Dutch folklore. He is also generally credited
as one of the first to write both in the vernacular, and without an obligation
to the moral or didactic in his short stories, writing stories simply to
entertain rather than to enlighten. Irving also encouraged would-be writers. As
George William Curtis noted, there "is not a young literary aspirant in
the country, who, if he ever personally met Irving, did not hear from him the
kindest words of sympathy, regard, and encouragement."
Some critics, however—including Edgar Allan
Poe—felt that while Irving should be given credit for being an innovator, the
writing itself was often unsophisticated. "Irving is much
over-rated", Poe wrote in 1838, "and a nice distinction might be
drawn between his just and his surreptitious and adventitious
reputation—between what is due to the pioneer solely, and what to the
writer". A critic for the New-York
Mirror wrote: "No man in the Republic of Letters has been more overrated
than Mr. Washington Irving."
Some critics noted especially
that Irving, despite being an American, catered to British sensibilities and,
as one critic noted, wrote "of and for England, rather than his own
country
Other critics were inclined to be
more forgiving of Irving's style. William Makepeace Thackeray was the first to
refer to Irving as the "ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to
the Old", a banner picked up by writers and critics throughout the 19th
and 20th centuries. "He is the first of the American humorists, as he is
almost the first of the American writers", wrote critic H.R. Hawless in
1881, "yet belonging to the New World, there is a quaint Old World flavor
about him".
Early critics often had
difficulty separating Irving the man from Irving the writer—"The life of
Washington Irving was one of the brightest ever led by an author", wrote
Richard Henry Stoddard, an early Irving biographer—but as years passed and
Irving's celebrity personality faded into the background, critics often began
to review his writings as all style, no substance. "The man had no
message", said critic Barrett Wendell. Yet, critics conceded that despite
Irving's lack of sophisticated themes—Irving biographer Stanley T. Williams
could be scathing in his assessment of Irving's work—most agreed he wrote elegantly.
Irving popularized the nickname
"Gotham" for New York City, later used in Batman comics and movies,
and is credited with inventing the expression "the almighty dollar".
The surname of his Dutch historian, Diedrich
Knickerbocker, is generally associated with New York and New Yorkers, and can
still be seen across the jerseys of New York's professional basketball team,
albeit in its more familiar, abbreviated form, reading simply Knicks. In
Bushwick, Brooklyn, a neighborhood of New York City, there are two parallel
streets named Irving Avenue and Knickerbocker Avenue; the latter forms the core
of the neighborhood's shopping district.
One of Irving's most lasting contributions to
American culture is in the way Americans perceive and celebrate Christmas. In
his 1812 revisions to A History of New York, Irving inserted a dream sequence
featuring St. Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon—a creation
others would later dress up as Santa Claus. In his five Christmas stories in
The Sketch Book, Irving portrayed an idealized celebration of old-fashioned
Christmas customs at a quaint English manor, that depicted harmonious
warm-hearted English Christmas festivities he experienced while staying in
Aston Hall, Birmingham, England, that had largely been abandoned. He used text
from The Vindication of Christmas (London 1652) of old English Christmas
traditions, he had transcribed into his journal as a format for his stories.
The book contributed to the revival and reinterpretation of the Christmas
holiday in the United States. Charles Dickens later credited Irving as an
influence on his own Christmas writings, including the classic A Christmas
Carol.
The Community Area of Irving Park in Chicago
was named in Irving's honor. The Irving Trust Corporation (now the Bank of New
York Mellon Corporation) was named after him. Since there was not yet a federal
currency in 1851, each bank issued its own paper and those institutions with
the most appealing names found their certificates more widely accepted. His
portrait appeared on the bank's notes and contributed to their wide appeal.
In his biography of Christopher Columbus,
Irving introduced the erroneous idea that Europeans believed the world to be
flat prior to the discovery of the New World. Borrowed from Irving, the
flat-Earth myth has been taught in schools as fact to many generations of
Americans
Washington Irving's home, Sunnyside, is still
standing, just south of the Tappan Zee Bridge in Tarrytown, New York. The
original house and the surrounding property were once owned by 18th-century
colonialist Wolfert Acker, about whom Irving wrote his sketch Wolfert's Roost
(the name of the house). The house is now owned and operated as a historic site
by Historic Hudson Valley and is open to the public for tours.
About
the Legend of Sleepy Hollow
"The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow" is a short story by Washington Irving contained in his collection
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., written while he was living in
Birmingham, England, and first published in 1820. With Irving's companion piece
"Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is among
the earliest examples of American fiction still read today.
The story is set circa 1790 in the Dutch
settlement of Tarry Town (based on Tarrytown, New York), in a secluded glen
called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, who is a lean,
lanky, and extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes
with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of
18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy
farmer, Baltus Van Tassel. As Crane leaves a party he attended at the Van
Tassel home on an autumn night, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, who is
supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who had his head shot off by a stray
cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American
Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly
quest of his head". Ichabod mysteriously disappears from town, leaving
Katrina to marry Brom Bones, who was "to look exceedingly knowing whenever
the story of Ichabod was related". Although the nature of the Headless
Horseman is left open to interpretation, the story implies that the Horseman
was really Brom in disguise.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington
Irving: hard bound book with a flowered silk cover and gold foil lettering,
printed circa 1907.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was
based on a German folktale set in the Dutch culture of Post-Revolutionary War
in New York State. The original folktale was recorded by Karl Musäus. An
excerpt of Musäus: The headless horseman
was often seen here. An old man who did not believe in ghosts told of meeting
the headless horseman coming from his trip into the Hollow. The horseman made
him climb up behind. They rode over bushes, hills, and swamps. When they reached
the bridge, the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton. He threw the old man
into the brook and sprang away over the treetops with a clap of thunder.
The dénouement of the fictional tale is set at
the bridge over the Pocantico River in the area of the Old Dutch Church and
Burying Ground in Sleepy Hollow. The characters of Ichabod Crane and Katrina
Van Tassel may have been based on local residents known to the author. The
character of Katrina is thought to have been based upon Eleanor Van Tassel Brush,
in which case her name is derived from that of Eleanor's aunt Catriena Ecker
Van Texel.
Irving, while he was an aide-de-camp to New
York Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins, met an army captain named Ichabod Crane in
Sackets Harbor, New York during an inspection tour of fortifications in 1814.
He may have patterned the character in "The Legend" after Jesse
Merwin, who taught at the local schoolhouse in Kinderhook, further north along
the Hudson River, where Irving spent several months in 1809. The story was the longest one published as
part of The Sketch Book, which Irving issued using the pseudonym "Geoffrey
Crayon" in 1820.
FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS
OF
THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, Of
dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds
that pass, Forever flushing round a summer sky. CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.
In the bosom of one of those spacious coves
which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the
river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where
they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St.
Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which
by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known
by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by
the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of
their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it
may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of
being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two
miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which
is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through
it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle
of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks
in upon the uniform tranquility.
I recollect that, when a stripling, my first
exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades
one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is
peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the
Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry
echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the
world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled
life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.
From the listless repose of the place, and the
peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original
Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY
HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all
the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the
land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched
by a High German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that
an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there
before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the
place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell
over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie.
They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and
visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the
air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and
twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley
than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold,
seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.
The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this
enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the
air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by
some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by
a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is
ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as
if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but
extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a
church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians
of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating
facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper having been
buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in
nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes
passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated,
and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.
Such is the general purport of this legendary
superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that
region of shadows; and the spectre is known at all the country firesides, by
the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.
It is remarkable that the visionary propensity
I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but
is unconsciously imbibed by everyone who resides there for a time. However wide
awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure,
in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to
grow imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions.
I mention this peaceful spot with all possible
laud, for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there
embosomed in the great State of New York, that population, manners, and customs
remain fixed, while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is
making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps
by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water, which
border a rapid stream, where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at
anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of
the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy
shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the
same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.
In this by-place of nature there abode, in a
remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a
worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed
it, "tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the
children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a State which
supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and
sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters.
The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but
exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled
a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his
whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top,
with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it
looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the
wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with
his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for
the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a
cornfield.
His schoolhouse was a low building of one
large room, rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and partly
patched with leaves of old copybooks. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant
hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the
window shutters; so that though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he
would find some embarrassment in getting out,--an idea most probably borrowed
by the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot. The
schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot
of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a formidable birch-tree
growing at one end of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices,
conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the
hum of a beehive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master,
in the tone of menace or command, or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of
the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge.
Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden
maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars
certainly were not spoiled.
I would not have it imagined, however, that he
was one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their
subjects; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather
than severity; taking the burden off the backs of the weak, and laying it on
those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least
flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were
satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough wrong-headed,
broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen
beneath the birch. All this he called "doing his duty by their
parents;" and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by
the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that "he would
remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to live."
When school hours were over, he was even the
companion and playmate of the larger boys; and on holiday afternoons would
convoy some of the smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters, or
good housewives for mothers, noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed, it
behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from
his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him
with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating
powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to
country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers
whose children he instructed. With these he lived successively a week at a
time, thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, with all his worldly effects
tied up in a cotton handkerchief.
That all this might not be too onerous on the
purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a
grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of
rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers
occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms, helped to make hay, mended
the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood
for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute
sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became
wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers
by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and like the lion bold,
which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on
one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together.
In addition to his other vocations, he was the
singing- master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by
instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to
him on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band
of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm
from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of
the congregation; and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that
church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side
of the millpond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately
descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little makeshifts, in
that ingenious way which is commonly denominated "by hook and by
crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by
all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy
life of it.
The schoolmaster is generally a man of some
importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a
kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and
accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning
only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little
stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish
of cakes or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our
man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the
country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between
services on Sundays; gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overran
the surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the
tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the
adjacent millpond; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly
back, envying his superior elegance and address.
From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a
kind of travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from
house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He
was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had
read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's
"History of New England Witchcraft," in which, by the way, he most
firmly and potently believed.
He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small
shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous, and his
powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased
by his residence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous
for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was
dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover
bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con
over old Mather's direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the
printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp
and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be
quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited
imagination,--the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry
of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech
owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their
roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places,
now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across
his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his
blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost,
with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on
such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing
psalm tunes and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of
an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody, "in
linked sweetness long drawn out," floating from the distant hill, or along
the dusky road.
Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was
to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by
the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and
listen to their marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and
haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of
the headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes
called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and
of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which
prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully
with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact
that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time
topsy-turvy!
But if there was a pleasure in all this, while
snugly cuddling in the chimney corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow
from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show
its face, it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk
homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and
ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every
trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant
window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like
a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling
awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and
dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being
tramping close behind him! And how often was he thrown into complete dismay by
some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the
Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings!
All these, however, were mere terrors of the
night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many
spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes,
in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and
he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his
works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity
to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together,
and that was--a woman.
Among the musical disciples who assembled, one
evening in each week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van
Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a
blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and
rosy-cheeked as one of her father's peaches, and universally famed, not merely
for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a
coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of
ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the
ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought
over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a
provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the
country round.
Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart
towards the sex; and it is not to be wondered at that so tempting a morsel soon
found favor in his eyes, more especially after he had visited her in her
paternal mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving,
contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes
or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but within those
everything was snug, happy and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his
wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued himself upon the hearty abundance,
rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the
banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks in which
the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad
branches over it, at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and
sweetest water, in a little well formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling
away through the grass, to a neighboring brook, that babbled along among alders
and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have
served for a church; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth
with the treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from
morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and
rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some
with their heads under their wings or buried in their bosoms, and others
swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine
on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance
of their pens, from whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs,
as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an
adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were
gobbling through the farmyard, and Guinea fowls fretting about it, like
ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn
door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior and a fine
gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing in the pride and gladness
of his heart,--sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then
generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the
rich morsel which he had discovered.
The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked
upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind's
eye, he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in
his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a
comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were
swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug
married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw
carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey
but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and,
peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages; and even bright chanticleer
himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if
craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living.
As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this,
and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich
fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards
burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel,
his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his
imagination expanded with the idea, how they might be readily turned into cash,
and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land, and shingle palaces in
the wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented
to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the
top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling
beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her
heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee,--or the Lord knows where!
When he entered the house, the conquest of his
heart was complete. It was one of those spacious farmhouses, with high- ridged
but lowly sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch
settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front, capable of
being closed up in bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various
utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring river. Benches
were built along the sides for summer use; and a great spinning-wheel at one
end, and a churn at the other, showed the various uses to which this important
porch might be devoted. From this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered the
hall, which formed the centre of the mansion, and the place of usual residence.
Here rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In
one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be spun; in another, a quantity
of linsey-woolsey just from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried
apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud
of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor,
where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors;
andirons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert
of asparagus tops; mock- oranges and conch-shells decorated the mantelpiece;
strings of various-colored birds eggs were suspended above it; a great ostrich
egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left
open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well-mended china.
From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon
these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only
study was how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In
this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to
the lot of a knight-errant of yore, who seldom had anything but giants,
enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily conquered adversaries, to
contend with and had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass,
and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where the lady of his heart was
confined; all which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the
centre of a Christmas pie; and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of
course. Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country
coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever
presenting new difficulties and impediments; and he had to encounter a host of
fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers, who
beset every portal to her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye upon each
other, but ready to fly out in the common cause against any new competitor.
Among these, the most formidable was a burly,
roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch
abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with
his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and
double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant
countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean
frame and great powers of limb he had received the nickname of BROM BONES, by
which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in
horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at
all races and cock fights; and, with the ascendancy which bodily strength
always acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat
on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone that admitted of no
gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic; but had
more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all his overbearing
roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom. He had
three or four boon companions, who regarded him as their model, and at the head
of whom he scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for
miles round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted with
a flaunting fox's tail; and when the folks at a country gathering descried this
well-known crest at a distance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders,
they always stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing
along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of
Don Cossacks; and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for
a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, "Ay,
there goes Brom Bones and his gang!" The neighbors looked upon him with a
mixture of awe, admiration, and good-will; and, when any madcap prank or rustic
brawl occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads, and warranted Brom
Bones was at the bottom of it.
This rantipole hero had for some time singled
out the blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though
his amorous toyings were something like the gentle caresses and endearments of
a bear, yet it was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his hopes.
Certain it is, his advances were signals for rival candidates to retire, who
felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours; insomuch, that when his
horse was seen tied to Van Tassel's paling, on a Sunday night, a sure sign that
his master was courting, or, as it is termed, "sparking," within, all
other suitors passed by in despair, and carried the war into other quarters.
Such was the formidable rival with whom
Ichabod Crane had to contend, and, considering all things, a stouter man than
he would have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would have
despaired. He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability and perseverance in
his nature; he was in form and spirit like a supple-jack--yielding, but tough;
though he bent, he never broke; and though he bowed beneath the slightest
pressure, yet, the moment it was away--jerk!--he was as erect, and carried his
head as high as ever.
To have taken the field openly against his
rival would have been madness; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his
amours, any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his
advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character
of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had
anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so
often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an easy
indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a
reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His
notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and
manage her poultry; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish
things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves. Thus,
while the busy dame bustled about the house, or plied her spinning-wheel at one
end of the piazza, honest Balt would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other,
watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword
in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn.
In the meantime, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the side
of the spring under the great elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, that
hour so favorable to the lover's eloquence.
I profess not to know how women's hearts are
wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.
Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others
have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It
is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of
generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his
fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is
therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the
heart of a coquette is indeed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case with
the redoubtable Brom Bones; and from the moment Ichabod Crane made his
advances, the interests of the former evidently declined: his horse was no
longer seen tied to the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually
arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow.
Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in
his nature, would fain have carried matters to open warfare and have settled
their pretensions to the lady, according to the mode of those most concise and
simple reasoners, the knights-errant of yore,-- by single combat; but Ichabod
was too conscious of the superior might of his adversary to enter the lists
against him; he had overheard a boast of Bones, that he would "double the
schoolmaster up, and lay him on a shelf of his own schoolhouse;" and he
was too wary to give him an opportunity. There was something extremely
provoking in this obstinately pacific system; it left Brom no alternative but
to draw upon the funds of rustic waggery in his disposition, and to play off
boorish practical jokes upon his rival. Ichabod became the object of whimsical
persecution to Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried his hitherto
peaceful domains; smoked out his singing school by stopping up the chimney;
broke into the schoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable fastenings of
withe and window stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy, so that the poor
schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their meetings
there. But what was still more annoying, Brom took all opportunities of turning
him into ridicule in presence of his mistress, and had a scoundrel dog whom he
taught to whine in the most ludicrous manner, and introduced as a rival of
Ichabod's, to instruct her in psalmody.
In this way matters went on for some time,
without producing any material effect on the relative situations of the
contending powers. On a fine autumnal afternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat
enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of
his little literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of
despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne,
a constant terror to evil doers, while on the desk before him might be seen
sundry contraband articles and prohibited weapons, detected upon the persons of
idle urchins, such as half-munched apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and
whole legions of rampant little paper gamecocks. Apparently there had been some
appalling act of justice recently inflicted, for his scholars were all busily
intent upon their books, or slyly whispering behind them with one eye kept upon
the master; and a kind of buzzing stillness reigned throughout the schoolroom.
It was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a negro in tow-cloth jacket
and trowsers, a round-crowned fragment of a hat, like the cap of Mercury, and
mounted on the back of a ragged, wild, half-broken colt, which he managed with
a rope by way of halter. He came clattering up to the school door with an
invitation to Ichabod to attend a merry-making or "quilting frolic,"
to be held that evening at Mynheer Van Tassel's; and having delivered his
message with that air of importance, and effort at fine language, which a negro
is apt to display on petty embassies of the kind, he dashed over the brook, and
was seen scampering away up the hollow, full of the importance and hurry of his
mission.
All was now bustle and hubbub in the late
quiet schoolroom. The scholars were hurried through their lessons without
stopping at trifles; those who were nimble skipped over half with impunity, and
those who were tardy had a smart application now and then in the rear, to
quicken their speed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside
without being put away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned, benches
thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual
time, bursting forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about
the green in joy at their early emancipation.
The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an
extra half hour at his toilet, brushing and furbishing up his best, and indeed
only suit of rusty black, and arranging his locks by a bit of broken
looking-glass that hung up in the schoolhouse. That he might make his
appearance before his mistress in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a
horse from the farmer with whom he was domiciliated, a choleric old Dutchman of
the name of Hans Van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth like a
knight- errant in quest of adventures. But it is meet I should, in the true
spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipments of my
hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode was a broken-down plow-horse, that
had outlived almost everything but its viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged,
with a ewe neck, and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled
and knotted with burs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and
spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must
have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of
Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master's, the choleric
Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of
his own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there
was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country.
Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a
steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the
pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried
his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged
on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A
small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of
forehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost
to the horses tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they
shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an
apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight.
It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day;
the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which
we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their
sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped
by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming
files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the bark of
the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory- nuts, and the
pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field.
The small birds were taking their farewell
banquets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and
frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very
profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cock robin, the
favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the
twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker
with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the
cedar bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little
monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay
light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and
bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of
the grove.
As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye,
ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the
treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples; some
hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees; some gathered into baskets and
barrels for the market; others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press.
Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping
from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty-
pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair
round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of
pies; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields breathing the odor of
the beehive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of
dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, by the
delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel.
Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts
and "sugared suppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range
of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson.
The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west. The wide bosom of
the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a
gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain.
A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them.
The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple
green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid- heaven. A slanting ray
lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the
river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A
sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her
sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky
gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the
air.
It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at
the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and
flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern- faced race, in
homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter
buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close-crimped caps,
long-waisted short gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions,
and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as
antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or
perhaps a white frock, gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short
square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair
generally queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure
an eel-skin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the country as a
potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair.
Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the
scene, having come to the gathering on his favorite steed Daredevil, a
creature, like himself, full of mettle and mischief, and which no one but
himself could manage. He was, in fact, noted for preferring vicious animals, given
to all kinds of tricks which kept the rider in constant risk of his neck, for
he held a tractable, well-broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit.
Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of
charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of my hero, as he entered the state
parlor of Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with
their luxurious display of red and white; but the ample charms of a genuine
Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped up platters
of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced
Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly koek, and the
crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and
honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and
peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and
moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and
quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls
of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy- piggledy, pretty much as I have
enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from
the midst-- Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet
as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod
Crane was not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to
every dainty.
He was a kind and thankful creature, whose
heart dilated in proportion as his skin was filled with good cheer, and whose
spirits rose with eating, as some men's do with drink. He could not help, too,
rolling his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling with the possibility
that he might one day be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury
and splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he'd turn his back upon the old
schoolhouse; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other
niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should
dare to call him comrade!
Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his
guests with a face dilated with content and good humor, round and jolly as the
harvest moon. His hospitable attentions were brief, but expressive, being
confined to a shake of the hand, a slap on the shoulder, a loud laugh, and a
pressing invitation to "fall to, and help themselves."
And now the sound of the music from the common
room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician was an old gray-headed
negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra of the neighborhood for more than
half a century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater
part of the time he scraped on two or three strings, accompanying every
movement of the bow with a motion of the head; bowing almost to the ground, and
stamping with his foot whenever a fresh couple were to start.
Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as
much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and
to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the
room, you would have thought St. Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the
dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the
negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the
neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and
window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eyeballs, and
showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear. How could the flogger of
urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous? The lady of his heart was his
partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his amorous
oglings; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding
by himself in one corner.
When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was
attracted to a knot of the sager folks, who, with Old Van Tassel, sat smoking
at one end of the piazza, gossiping over former times, and drawing out long
stories about the war.
This neighborhood, at the time of which I am
speaking, was one of those highly favored places which abound with chronicle
and great men. The British and American line had run near it during the war; it
had, therefore, been the scene of marauding and infested with refugees,
cowboys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to
enable each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction,
and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of
every exploit.
There was the story of Doffue Martling, a
large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old
iron nine-pounder from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth
discharge. And there was an old gentleman who shall be nameless, being too rich
a mynheer to be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of White Plains, being an
excellent master of defence, parried a musket-ball with a small sword, insomuch
that he absolutely felt it whiz round the blade, and glance off at the hilt; in
proof of which he was ready at any time to show the sword, with the hilt a
little bent. There were several more that had been equally great in the field,
not one of whom but was persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing
the war to a happy termination.
But all these were nothing to the tales of
ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary
treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these
sheltered, long-settled retreats; but are trampled under foot by the shifting
throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there
is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely
had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their
surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood; so that when they
turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call
upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our
long-established Dutch communities.
The immediate cause, however, of the
prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless owing to the
vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from
that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies
infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van
Tassel's, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many
dismal tales were told about funeral trains, and mourning cries and wailings
heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major André was
taken, and which stood in the neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the
woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard
to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow.
The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite spectre of
Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman, who had been heard several times of late,
patrolling the country; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the
graves in the churchyard.
The sequestered situation of this church seems
always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a
knoll, surrounded by locust-trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent,
whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through
the shades of retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of
water, bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at the blue
hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem
to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in
peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which raves a
large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black
part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden
bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by
overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the daytime; but
occasioned a fearful darkness at night. Such was one of the favorite haunts of
the Headless Horseman, and the place where he was most frequently encountered.
The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how
he met the Horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollow, and was
obliged to get up behind him; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill
and swamp, until they reached the bridge; when the Horseman suddenly turned
into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the
tree-tops with a clap of thunder.
This story was immediately matched by a thrice
marvellous adventure of Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as
an arrant jockey. He affirmed that on returning one night from the neighboring
village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that he
had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too,
for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the
church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a flash of fire.
All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone
with which men talk in the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and
then receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sank deep in the mind
of Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large extracts from his invaluable
author, Cotton Mather, and added many marvellous events that had taken place in
his native State of Connecticut, and fearful sights which he had seen in his
nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow.
The revel now gradually broke up. The old
farmers gathered together their families in their wagons, and were heard for
some time rattling along the hollow roads, and over the distant hills. Some of
the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their
light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the
silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter, until they gradually died
away,--and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted.
Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the custom of country lovers, to
have a tête-à-tête with the heiress; fully convinced that he was now on the
high road to success. What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say,
for in fact I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong,
for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite
desolate and chapfallen. Oh, these women! these women! Could that girl have
been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the
poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven only
knows, not I! Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one
who had been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady's heart. Without
looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth, on which he
had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty
cuffs and kicks roused his steed most uncourteously from the comfortable
quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn and
oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover.
It was the very witching time of night that
Ichabod, heavy-hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travels homewards, along
the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had
traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far
below him the Tappan Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with
here and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the
land. In the dead hush of midnight, he could even hear the barking of the
watchdog from the opposite shore of the Hudson; but it was so vague and faint
as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man.
Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened,
would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills--but it was
like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but
occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang
of a bullfrog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and
turning suddenly in his bed.
All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he
had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night
grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving
clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and
dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes
of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of the road stood an enormous
tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the
neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and
fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost
to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical
story of the unfortunate André, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was
universally known by the name of Major André's tree. The common people regarded
it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the
fate of its ill- starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights,
and doleful lamentations, told concerning it.
As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he
began to whistle; he thought his whistle was answered; it was but a blast
sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he
thought he saw something white, hanging in the midst of the tree: he paused and
ceased whistling but, on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a place
where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare.
Suddenly he heard a groan--his teeth chattered, and his knees smote against the
saddle: it was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another, as they were
swayed about by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay
before him.
About two hundred yards from the tree, a small
brook crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and thickly-wooded glen, known by
the name of Wiley's Swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a
bridge over this stream. On that side of the road where the brook entered the
wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines, threw
a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial. It was
at this identical spot that the unfortunate André was captured, and under the
covert of those chestnuts and vines were the sturdy yeomen concealed who
surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and
fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone after dark.
As he approached the stream, his heart began
to thump; he summoned up, however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a
score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge;
but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral
movement, and ran broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased
with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the
contrary foot: it was all in vain; his steed started, it is true, but it was
only to plunge to the opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles and
alder bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel upon the
starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling and snorting,
but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent
his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the
side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of
the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen and
towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic
monster ready to spring upon the traveller.
The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon
his head with terror. What was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late;
and besides, what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was,
which could ride upon the wings of the wind? Summoning up, therefore, a show of
courage, he demanded in stammering accents, "Who are you?" He
received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still
there was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible
Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervor into a
psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and
with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road. Though the
night was dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree
be ascertained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions, and mounted
on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or sociability,
but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old
Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and waywardness.
Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange
midnight companion, and bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with
the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind.
The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up,
and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind,--the other did the same. His
heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but his
parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave.
There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious
companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted
for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his
fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in
a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!--but his
horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have
rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle!
His terror rose to desperation; he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon
Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip; but the
spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and
thin; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod's flimsy
garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his
horse's head, in the eagerness of his flight.
They had now reached the road which turns off
to Sleepy Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of
keeping up it, made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong downhill to the
left. This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a
quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story; and just
beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.
As yet the panic of the steed had given his
unskilful rider an apparent advantage in the chase, but just as he had got half
way through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it
slipping from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and endeavored to hold it
firm, but in vain; and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder
round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled
under foot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper's wrath passed
across his mind,--for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty
fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches; and (unskilful rider that he was!)
he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes
on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's backbone,
with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder.
An opening in the trees now cheered him with
the hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a
silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw
the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected
the place where Brom Bones's ghostly competitor had disappeared. "If I can
but reach that bridge," thought Ichabod, "I am safe." Just then
he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied
that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old
Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he
gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his
pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone.
Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of
hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but
too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash,--he was tumbled
headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider,
passed by like a whirlwind.
The next morning the old horse was found
without his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the
grass at his master's gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast;
dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and
strolled idly about the banks of the brook; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van
Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod, and
his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they
came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church was found
the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses' hoofs deeply dented in
the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond
which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and
black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a
shattered pumpkin.
The brook was searched, but the body of the
schoolmaster was not to be discovered. Hans Van Ripper as executor of his
estate, examined the bundle which contained all his worldly effects. They
consisted of two shirts and a half; two stocks for the neck; a pair or two of
worsted stockings; an old pair of corduroy small- clothes; a rusty razor; a
book of psalm tunes full of dog's-ears; and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the
books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community,
excepting Cotton Mather's "History of Witchcraft," a "New
England Almanac," and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last
was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless
attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These
magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by
Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children
no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same
reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed, and he had
received his quarter's pay but a day or two before, he must have had about his
person at the time of his disappearance.
The mysterious event caused much speculation
at the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were
collected in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and
pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of
others were called to mind; and when they had diligently considered them all,
and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook their
heads, and came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the
Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled
his head any more about him; the school was removed to a different quarter of
the hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.
It is true, an old farmer, who had been down
to New York on a visit several years after, and from whom this account of the
ghostly adventure was received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod
Crane was still alive; that he had left the neighborhood partly through fear of
the goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been
suddenly dismissed by the heiress; that he had changed his quarters to a
distant part of the country; had kept school and studied law at the same time;
had been admitted to the bar; turned politician; electioneered; written for the
newspapers; and finally had been made a justice of the Ten Pound Court. Brom
Bones, too, who, shortly after his rival's disappearance conducted the blooming
Katrina in triumph to the altar, was observed to look exceedingly knowing
whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh
at the mention of the pumpkin; which led some to suspect that he knew more
about the matter than he chose to tell.
The old country wives, however, who are the
best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited
away by supernatural means; and it is a favorite story often told about the
neighborhood round the winter evening fire. The bridge became more than ever an
object of superstitious awe; and that may be the reason why the road has been
altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the
millpond. The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported
to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue and the plowboy,
loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a
distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of
Sleepy Hollow.