#Spooktober ‘The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow’ by Washington Irving

About the story…

Ichabod Crane, a schoolteacher, came to Tarry Town in the glen of Sleepy Hollow to ply his trade in educating young minds.

He was a gullible and excitable fellow, often so terrified by locals’ stories of ghosts that he would hurry through the woods on his way home, singing to keep from hysterics. Until late one night, he finds that maybe they’re not just stories.

What is that dark, menacing figure riding behind him on a horse?

And what does it have in its hands?

And why wasn’t schoolteacher Crane ever seen in Sleepy Hollow again?

Published in a variety of paperback editions, with other stories by the same author, ‘The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories’ by Washington Irving is a perennial classic that just begs to be read as autumn closes in…

Multiple adaptations have tackled what surely must be recognised as an influential piece of American literary heritage-from Disney’s animation to the recent tv series, ‘Sleepy Hollow’, and in novel form, most recently the superb ‘Horseman’ by Christina Henry

Which adaptation do you like best?

What about these tales keeps us wrapped up in blankets with all the lights on, so many years after the original publication?

It is a brief but engaging tale of courtship,myth and superstition all of which were carried with the Dutch settlers to the new world and which attracted Ichabod Crane to the township of Tarry.

Indeed, that is where he tarried,in anticipation of a life waiting to begin,setting himself up as a school master and singing master.

Indulging himself in his spare time in the tales of Cotton Mather about punishment of alleged witches,he absorbs all the rumours around him.

Particularly of interest is the tale of the Hessian rider who is buried in the local graveyard, but interred without his head,and who rides out locally every night towards the battlefield to find it.

Ichabod’s mission to improve young minds goes astray after meeting the becoming heiress Katrina Van Tassel who he sees as his way out of the town and into the future.

His rival, Brom Bones,unused to losing,is most put out when at a reception for the village,Ichabod is seen dancing with Katrina.

As the hours go on he tells the tale of having met the Hessian rider, and,indeed running him down with his steed,Daredevil, avoiding capture by meeting the covered bridge and crossing it.

After requesting a meeting with Katrina,Ichabod goes home the subject of whether she approved of or encouraged his courtship is unknown because Ichabod was never seen again….

Whether it was his fearful imagination which allowed him to be thrown off his horse or whether it was a more earthly than spiritual haunting that led to his death or vanishing will never be known.

What is,however, known is that his Gunpowder was found saddle-less and rider- less the next morning and a general consensus that being spurned led him to leave.

Or the Horseman got him.

As a more sceptical reader I think Brom was disguised as the Horseman and scared him to death, leaving him to pass into legend much like the tales he was so fond of.

It is a self fulfilling prophecy, a comedy and horror tale of sleepwalking through your life and allowing the little things which influence you to become suffocating.

The rumours which become the stories which become the stuff of legend are highly amusing, that is,until you become an integral part of the mystery itself…

About the author…

Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He began his literary career at the age of nineteen by writing newspaper articles under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle.

In 1809, he published The History of New York under his most popular public persona, Diedrich Knickerbocker.

Irving is 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., which he published in 1819.