Along with Irving's companion piece "Rip Van Winkle," "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is among the earliest examples of American fiction with enduring popularity, especially during Halloween because of a character known as the Headless Horseman believed to be a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball in battle.[1]
The story is set in 1790 in the countryside near the former Dutch settlementofTarry Town, in a secluded glen known as Sleepy Hollow. It relates the tale of Ichabod Crane, a lean, lanky, superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut. Ichabod intends to woo Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter of a wealthy farmer, in order to procure her family's riches for himself. He competes for her affection with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy. Unable to goad Ichabod into fighting for Katrina's hand, Brom instead wages a campaign of harassment against the schoolmaster, plaguing him with a series of pranks and practical jokes.
One autumn night, Ichabod is invited to attend a harvest party at the Van Tassel homestead. At the party, Brom tells the story of the Headless Horseman, the notorious ghost of a Hessian trooper decapitated by a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. The Horseman is supposedly buried in a churchyard in Sleepy Hollow and rises from his grave every night to search for his missing head, but is supernaturally barred from crossing a wooden bridge that spans a nearby stream.
Ichabod proposes to Katrina, but she rejects his advances. He leaves the party heartbroken and rides home on a borrowed plough horse named Gunpowder. He encounters a cloaked rider and believes it to be the Headless Horseman. Ichabod rides for his life, desperately goading Gunpowder down the Hollow. The Horseman rears his horse and hurls his severed head directly at Crane, knocking him off his horse.
The next morning, Gunpowder is found eating the grass at his master's gate, but Ichabod has mysteriously disappeared from the area, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones. Although the true nature of both the Headless Horseman and Ichabod's disappearance that night are left open to interpretation, the story implies that the Horseman was really Brom in disguise, using a Jack-o'-lantern as a false head, and suggests that Crane survived the fall from Gunpowder and immediately fled Sleepy Hollow in horror.
The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane (1858) by John Quidor
The story was the longest one published as part of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (commonly referred to as The Sketch Book), which Irving issued serially throughout 1819 and 1820, using the pseudonym "Geoffrey Crayon".[2] Irving wrote The Sketch Book during a tour of Europe, and parts of the tale may also be traced to European origins. Headless horsemen were staples of Northern Europe storytelling, featuring in German, Irish (e.g., Dullahan), Scandinavian (e.g., the Wild Hunt), and British legends, and were included in Robert Burns's Scots poem "Tam o' Shanter" (1790) and Bürger's Der Wilde Jäger (1778), translated as The Wild Huntsman (1796). Usually viewed as omens of ill fortune for those who chose to disregard their apparitions, these spectres found their victims in proud, scheming persons and characters with hubris and arrogance.[3] One particularly influential rendition of this folktale was the last of the "Legenden von Rübezahl" ('Legends of Rübezahl') from J. K. A. Musäus's literary retellings of German folktales Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1783).[4]
After the Battle of White Plains in October 1776, the country south of the Bronx River was abandoned by the Continental Army and occupied by the British. The Americans were fortified north of Peekskill, leaving Westchester County a 30-mile stretch of scorched and desolated no-man's-land, vulnerable to outlaws, raiders, and vigilantes. Besides droves of Loyalist rangers and British light infantry, Hessian Jägers—renowned sharpshooters and horsemen—were among the raiders who often skirmished with Patriot militias.[5] The Headless Horseman may have indeed been based loosely on the discovery of such a corpse found in Sleepy Hollow after a violent skirmish, and later buried by the Van Tassel family, in an unmarked grave in the Old Dutch Burying Ground.[6]
According to another hypothesis, the figure of the "headless rider" Irving could have been drawn from German literature, and more precisely from the Chronicle of Szprotawa by J.G. Kreis written in the first half of the 19th century. In the 19th century, the police counselor Kreis noted that in the previous century, the inhabitants of this city were afraid to move after dusk on Hospitalstrasse (now Sądowa Street) due to the headless rider apparition seen there.[7]
In support of the hypothesis, according to information taken from the work by Z.Sinko entitled Polish Reception of Washington Irving's Work: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism from 1988, Walter Scott encouraged Irving to learn German to be able to read stories, ballads, and legends in their native language.[8]
Irving, while he was an aide-de-camp to New York Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, met an army captain named Ichabod CraneinSackets Harbor, New York during an inspection tour of fortifications in 1814. Irving may have patterned the character after Jesse Merwin, who taught at the local schoolhouse in Kinderhook, further north along the Hudson River, where Irving spent several months in 1809.[9] Alternatively, it is claimed by many in Tarrytown that Samuel Youngs is the original from whom Irving drew his character.[10] Author Gary Deniss asserts that while Crane is loosely based on Merwin, it may include elements from Youngs's life.[11]
Ichabod Crane, Respectfully Dedicated to Washington Irving. William J. Wilgus (1819–53), artist Chromolithograph, c. 1856
With "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is one of Irving's most anthologized, studied, and adapted sketches. Both stories are often paired together in books and other representations, and both are included in surveys of early American literature and Romanticism.[12] Irving's depictions of regional culture and his themes of progress versus tradition, supernatural intervention in the commonplace, and the plight of the individual outsider in a homogeneous community permeate both stories and helped to develop a unique sense of American cultural and existential selfhood during the early 19th century.[13]
Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow [1] by Christina Henry, a fictional horror novel published in 2021. It takes place in Sleepy Hollow several decades after the events of the original story. It is told from the points of view of Ben Van Brunt, the only grandchild of Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt and Katrina Van Tassel.
The Hollow (2004), an ABC Family television film starring Kevin Zegers and Kaley Cuoco, and focusing on a teenage descendant of Ichabod Crane.
Sleepy Hollow (2013), a crime/horror series in which Ichabod Crane awakens in the 21st century and teams up with Lt. Abbie Mills of the Sleepy Hollow Sheriff's Department to stop the Horseman. The show ran for four seasons.[15]
"Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story" (2022), a web series in which Ichabod Crane and The Headless Horseman are roommates and have to work together to solve the mystery of The Horseman's head.[16]
Sleepy Hollow (1948), a Broadway musical, with music by George Lessner and book and lyrics by Russell Maloney and Miriam Battista. It lasted 12 performances.[17]
Sleepy Hollow (2009), a musical with book and lyrics by Jim Christian and music by Tom Edward Clark. It premiered at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah on October 30, 2009.[18][19] It received the 2009 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Musical Theatre Award.[20]
The Hollow (2011), a musical by Matt Conner and Hunter Foster.[21] It premiered at the Signature Theatre Company in Arlington, Virginia.
Sleepy Hollow - A Legendary Musical (2017), a musical by Michelle Ackerman.[22]
Tarrytown (2018), a musical by Adam Wachter. Its world premiere production at Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company won the 2018 San Diego Theatre Critics' Circle Craig Noel Award for "Best New Musical."[23] A studio cast recording starring Jeremy Jordan, Krysta Rodriguez, and Andy Mientus was released in 2020 to benefit The Actors Fund's COVID-19 relief efforts.[24]
Ichabod: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (2022), a new production combining Conner's 2011 score with a new book by Stephen Gregory Smith that stays truer to Irving's story.[25]
Ronald Colman was the host and narrator for a radio adaptation on NBC's Favorite Story on July 2, 1946 (requested by Walter Huston as that actor's favorite story).[26]
^A letter from Merwin Irving was endorsed in Irving's handwriting "From Jesse Merwin, the original of Ichabod Crane". Life and Letters of Washington Irving. Vol. 3. New York: G.P. Putnam and Son. 1869. pp. 185–186.
^Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story (Comedy), Sean Persaud, Sinead Persaud, Gabe Greenspan, Shipwrecked Comedy, August 29, 2022, retrieved September 11, 2023{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
Thomas S. Wermuth (2001). Rip Van Winkle's Neighbors: The Transformation of Rural Society in the Hudson River Valley. State University of New York Press. ISBN0-7914-5084-8.
Text availableatWikisource
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow public domain audiobook at LibriVox
