I must admit that prior to acquiring a copy of the new Penguin Classics title The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories (a reprint of Washington Irving’s The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.) I was only dimly familiar with the title story, having read it once in high school.
I had, of course, seen Tim Burton’s 1999 film Sleepy Hollow, and a couple of episodes of the goofy but fun television series of the same name. I was also horrified by the Disney cartoon The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as a small child. I have plenty of memories of each of the preceding, but I’m sad to say that I recalled very little of Irving’s original story.
With Halloween just weeks away, it seemed as good a time as any to revisit Irving’s classic tale. While the holiday isn’t mentioned in the story by name, the presence of a pumpkin help to place the story during autumn. It’s a ghost story, too. Or at least, we’re mean to think it might be.
Let's jump into the story:
Irving establishes Sleepy Hollow (a small community in Tarrytown, NY) very early on as a place of tranquil beauty and lingering magic: a liminal realm between between dream and wakefulness, progress and wild nature, superstition and rationality.
"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 marvelous 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."
It’s a beautiful paragraph. In scarcely more than 160 words, Irving creates an atmosphere thick with magic. By referencing multiple spiritual and magical traditions, the author establishes Sleepy Hollow’s enchanted bonafides; a place outside of science and reason where anything could happen. Would Irving’s readers have recognized all of the folkloric allusions? Probably not, but by casting such a wide magic net, chances are at least one of them would have been familiar to readers.
I'd like to take a few minutes and examine the material.
Irving’s “bewitched by a High German doctor” likely refers to the “pow-wow” hex magic practiced by Dutch immigrants to the East Coast. The name “pow-wow” is taken from Pow-Wow; or, Long Lost Friend, a book of folk magic written by John George Hohman in 1820. You can find a copy online without too much trouble, but I recommend Llewellyn Worldwide’s The Long Lost Friend: A 19th Century American Grimoire, edited and annotated by scholar Daniel Harms. It’s an attractive edition, and the pragmatic nature of the contents might be an eye-opener for anyone whose ideas of historical magic have been influenced by the wizards and necromancers of popular fiction.
Perhaps Irving didn’t call the the High German doctor’s witching a “pow-wow” because he wanted to use it in its better-known meaning as a gathering of Native American tribes. (“…an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there”). As far as I know, the word “shaman” had not yet entered the popular lexicon, at least in its modern sense as an anthropological description for tribal intermediaries between the material and spirit world. Hence, “prophet or wizard” is as good a description as any.
The word “pow-wow” was derived from the language of the Narragansett tribe of Rhode Island and generalized to mean any gathering of Native Americans. It is still in common usage today by Native Americans. Powwows - at least the ones I’ve attended - are part family reunion and part celebration of heritage not terribly different from any other ethnic-oriented festival (example: “Oktoberfest”) one might find. Some powwows are open to the public, and for a fee, visitors can sample Native American foodstuffs, watch dancing and other rites, and shop for authentic goods.
Sleepy Hollow remains “under the sway” of some kind of witchery, and we're told that the residents of Sleepy Hollow, we are told, “see strange sights and “hear music and voices in the air”. According to Patricia Monaghan’s The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore, people who wandered near fairy mounds and other lands claimed by the “fair folk” sometimes claimed to have seen fairy lights, and heard voices and music emanating from beneath the earth.
Irving tells us that “stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley”, and 19th century readers would have probably known that shooting stars and meteors have been taken as portents good and bad since ancient times. David Ritchie’s Comets: The Swords of Heaven includes a timeline of significant events blamed on comets: Supposedly, in 184 BC, fortune-tellers close to the Carthaginian general Hannibal told him that a comet they witnessed meant that he would soon die. He killed himself soon after. Religious tensions were high in 1000 AD, and there were those who interpreted comets and other celestial phenomena as signs of the Second Coming. Almost 350 years later a comet was witnessed just before the outbreak of the Black Plague.
Irving’s line about the people of Sleepy Hollow being “subject to trances and visions”, may refer to New York state’s preponderance of folk religions contemporaneous with the events of the story. During Irving’s time, New York state was home to break-off sects and populist religious movements of all sorts, many of them incorporating elements of spiritualism and prophecy. This cultural phenomena led some to refer to parts of western and central New York state as “burned-over districts”. A burned district was one that had been evangelized to the point where there were no more potential converts, and thus not worth another religious leader’s efforts.
Contrary to popular conception, not all of the first immigrants to North America were dour Puritans: Heretics and religious rebels traveled among them. Some of these seeking religious freedom were women in search of land upon which they might build religious communes devoted to some of the same radical principles one might associate with the various intentional communities of the twentieth century, like polyamory and the communal distribution of responsibilities and resources. There were, of course, many devoted to strict chastity, too, and it was sometimes even expected of married couples. For an excellent overview of the roles of folk religion, pseudo-historical groups like the Theosophists, and the “Positive Thinking” movement - a perennially popular belief system that most recently manifested as The Secret, readers are directed to Mitch Horowitz's Occult America. (A note: The Puritans weren’t as dour as you might think…)
Irving also includes a little nod to Shakespeare’s King Lear: “the nightmare, with her ninefold”, which in itself is a reference to the “mare”: a witch, goblin, or demon thought to “ride” upon the chests of sleepers. Sleep paralysis may have inspired this belief, and we continue to blame them for our bad dreams, at least in name only. The “ninefold”, according to Alexander Dyce’s A General Glossary to Shakespeare’s Works, means “nine familiars”: spirits that assist witches and other magical practitioners. Irving tells us that Sleepy Hollow is “the favorite scene of her gambols”: Apparently nightmares are common in these parts.
Later in the text, Irving states that even visitors who come to stay in Sleepy Hollow for any length of time fall under the same spell. Sleepy Hollow is a kind of fairyland, but not every fairy tale has a pleasant ending. H.P. Lovecraft’s story The Dunwich Horror starts in a similar way, but given a choice between Dunwich and Sleepy Hollow, I’d prefer to take my chances with the Headless Horseman.
Compare this paragraph from The Dunwich Horror to the preceding one from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:
"Outsiders visit Dunwich as seldom as possible, and since a certain season of horror all the signboards pointing toward it have been taken down. The scenery, judged by any ordinary aesthetic canon, is more than commonly beautiful; yet there is no influx of artists or summer tourists. Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding the locality. In our sensible age—since the Dunwich horror of 1928 was hushed up by those who had the town’s and the world’s welfare at heart—people shun it without knowing exactly why. Perhaps one reason—though it cannot apply to uninformed strangers—is that the natives are now repellently decadent, having gone far along that path of retrogression so common in many New England backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with the well-defined mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy and inbreeding. The average of their intelligence is woefully low, whilst their annals reek of overt viciousness and of half-hidden murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnamable violence and perversity. The old gentry, representing the two or three armigerous families which came from Salem in 1692, have kept somewhat above the general level of decay; though many branches are sunk into the sordid populace so deeply that only their names remain as a key to the origin they disgrace. Some of the Whateleys and Bishops still send their eldest sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though those sons seldom return to the mouldering gambrel roofs under which they and their ancestors were born.
What is most striking to me is how both authors establish a tone that will dominate their towns, but for Sleepy Hollow the town itself seems to be the character, but Dunwich Horror focuses on the horrific residents. It seem like even if everyone in Sleepy Hollow moved out en masse, the next group to move in would pick up without a hitch. They're almost secondary to the town itself.
Alright, let's parse out the rest of the magic in that first paragraph.
When Irving introduces the Headless Horseman, he refers to him as the region’s “dominant spirit”, and “chief of all the powers of the air”. The latter is taken from from the Holy Bible, Ephesians 2:2, and it’s a description of Satan. I believe that Irving is using it here to draw a comparison to Satan and his demons rather than identifying the Horseman as Satan. To say that the Horseman is the “dominant spirit” implies a command over all of the Hollow’s myriad spiritual forces; a relationship analogous to that of the Biblical Satan and his fellow fallen angels.
Our horseman is apparently the ghost of a fallen Hessian soldier whose head was taken off his shoulders by a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. The locals sometimes see him rushing about during the evenings to and from a churchyard where some believe him to be buried. “True historians” believe him to be in search of his head, and the horseman is always rushing about because he must be back in his grave before dawn.
Irving didn’t even this headless horseman out of whole cloth. Although our Hessian is probably the best-known example of the type, there are others scattered about German and Celtic folklore. These other horsemen are typically associated with the powers of death or justice. They punish criminals who have escaped punishment for their crimes, or appear as omens of death. Sometimes they are encountered as the leader of the Wild Hunt, and are accompanied by baying hounds. In any case, an encounter with a headless horseman is a frightening thing.
Newly arrived Connecticut schoolmaster Ichabod Crane isn’t nearly as intimidating, and Irving wants us to know this right away. “Ichabod” is a Biblical name. It means “No glory”.
The surname “Crane” was carefully chosen as well, as Irving suggests “the cognomen of crane was not inapplicable to his person” before moving on to describe Crane as having “hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves” and “feet that might have served as shovels”. Crane isn’t an entirely buffoonish character, though: Irving establishes that Crane is a capable teacher and an eligible bachelor considered sophisticated and gentlemanly by the maidens of the village.
We have to remember that Ichabod is sophisticated by the standards of a tiny rural village, though. He owns very little, and Irving informs us that it was the practice at the time for community members to take turns boarding the village schoolmaster for a week at a time. It can be a burden - and Irving stresses that despite his lanky frame, Ichabod has a huge appetite - but he helps out around the farms, and has managed to ingratiate himself further by teaching Bible classes. Ichabod gets a lot of attention in the villages, especially from the eligible young women (who by matter of his profession consider his tastes and accomplishments to be “vastly superior” to those of local bachelors), and even this early in the story Irving lets us know that the local “country bumpkins” are envious.
There’s something else about Ichabod: he’s superstitious, too. Irving describes him as an “odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity." Aren't we all, in some ways, shrewd and credulous?
Irving states that Ichabod was a “perfect master of Cotton Mather’s History of New England Witchcraft and believed it, too.” He spends Winter evenings trading stories with the “old Dutch wives” of the village, listening to their ghost stories, including tales of the “galloping Hessian Horseman of the Hollow”, and sharing his witch lore with them. Irving says that Ichabod derives “fearful pleasure” from these stories, but once night falls, our schoolteacher lets his imagination get away from him. He mistakes snow-covered vegetation for ghosts, and mistakes strong gusts of wind for the galloping of the Hessian’s horse.
Everyone in the village hears him singing Psalms to calm himself as he walks home. Sleepy Hollow is a small community and word probably gets around fast that Ichabod is superstitious, gullible, and easily frightened. This isn’t a local guy, he’s an outsider, and he’s not a farmhand or “country bumpkin”, either: This is a high-strung gangly, educated young bachelor inexplicably adored by the women of the village, all of whom would prefer him as a husband to any of the local young men.
I think Ichabod is in trouble, but before we move on with the story, I’d like to say something more about Cotton Mather, Irving, and Lovecraft
Cotton Mather, a New England Puritan minister, pamphleteer, and key figure in the Salem Witch Trials, also appears in the fiction of Lovecraft. Both Irving, at least in this instance, and Lovecraft make their stories seem more plausible by referencing historical persons, places, things, and events. More importantly, by doing so, they leave it up to the reader to discover what is true or not. Lovecraft and his fellow writers were especially fond of working in the names of real grimoires among the names of ones that they had created.
Readers interested in learning more about Mather and the events of the New England Witch Trials are urged to consult The Penguin Book of Witches edited by Katherine Howe.
With the background set and the character of Ichabod established, Irving introduces his ruin, and does it in kind of a sly (but sexist, 19th century) way, with a nice dollop of foreshadowing:
“…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.”
There: He’s doomed. No pleasant life for Ichabod, and it’s all some woman’s fault instead of, say, his failure to rid himself of his cowardice superstitious streak. You can clearly see that Irving was writing with the clear presumption that women wouldn’t be reading his work. While I can appreciate the tension-building lead-up, I can’t help but notice that this is Irving’s way of saying, “Women. Am I right, fellas?”
The woman is Katrina Van Tassell, one of Crane’s Bible study students. Katrina is the eighteen year-old daughter (and only child) of a wealthy Dutch farmer, and everyone in the village knows who she is. She’s as “plump as a partridge” and - I love this part - a “bit of a coquette” who wears her clothing to “set off her charms”. She also wears a “provokingly short petticoat”. How short? Get ready to be shocked: short enough to “display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.” We’ve. Got. Ankle.
Ichabod begins courting Katrina, and as soon as he arrives at her father’s vast estate, his thoughts turn toward his livestock first (he’s hungry), then the house and its belongings and how he might be able to sell all of it, and finally, Katrina, but only because he imagines her accompanying him out into the frontier where he can spend her daddy’s money on “vast tracts of land” to bear his children. I was immediately reminded of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where a lord tries to get his son to marry the daughter of another lord by emphasizing that she has “huge tracts of land”.
This could be Ichabod’s ticket to fortune, and he knows it, but he also realizes that he’s going to have plenty of trouble. His “peace of mind was at an end” when he realized how difficult it’s going to be to win the heart of a “country coquette” and also beat out all of the other suitors. We’re told that they’re quick to team up on a common rival - like a generally neurotic, gullible Connecticut schoolteacher of English stock who thinks that he can come in and win the hand of the most eligible young woman in town.
Enter Abraham Van Brunt, or as he’s known by the locals, “Brom Bones”. He’s pretty much the opposite of Ichabod in every way. He’s broad-shouldered, with a “Herculean” frame, and every inch the big, strapping, fun-loving country-boy. Brom loves pulling pranks, and is a locally renowned horseman. He and his buddies love to race their horses up and down Sleepy Hollow around midnight. I’m sure his love of pranks, skill with horses, and the fact that he’s well acquainted with racing through the village in the middle of the night are trivial and have nothing to do with the rest of the story. Ahem.
Brom has set his eyes on Katrina, and whereas all the locals have the sense not to cross Brom, Ichabod doesn’t. Or, at least he refuses to do so. He’s stubborn, and one can assume he’s not wiling to give up his meal ticket - I mean, the love of his life - so easily. Brom is more than happy to fight Ichabod, but at least on this point, the schoolmaster recognizes a challenge beyond his ability. Instead, he falls back on his one advantage: his education. He uses the pretense of musical instruction to justify his nightly trips to see Katrina.
Ichabod playing the part of the gentleman music instructor probably doesn't makes Brom too happy. After all, it’s Ichabod’s supposed sophistication that puts him a notch above Brom and his buddies, and were Brom to show up and bust Ichabod’s chops, he’d just end up making himself look even more like a “bumpkin” and his rival more like a sophisticated gentleman. That leaves Brom one option: Pranks. He’s good at pranks. He and his buddies start sabotaging the schoolhouse in different ways. Brom trains a dog to whine at Ichabod, and even hires a rival music instructor for Katrina. Poor Ichabod suspects witches, of course. This goes on for a while, but Ichabod won’t give up.
One autumn day while Ichabod is at his school, a messenger shows up with an invitation to a “quilting frolick” at the Van Tassell’s farm. Needless to say, Ichabod makes plans to attend, and even borrows a horse so that he can arrive in style. Irving stops the action for a moment and directly addresses the reader. The horse’s name is “Gunpowder”, but there’s not much bang left in the old boy. He’s well past his prime, half-blind and not very well cared for. But he still has “more of the lurking devil in him than any young filly in the country” so we know that Ichabod (who is apparently far too tall and lanky to ride this horse to begin with) is in for a rough night.
It seems odd, but at this late stage in the story, Crane (in the guise of Geoffrey Crayon, the author of the sketchbook within which the tale is written) seems intent on injecting himself more and more. He lavishes a great deal of attention on describing the food at the event: pumpkins, Indian corn, and other seasonal fare. I almost think that he’d give George R.R. Martin a run for his money when it comes to describing food. Still, it does set a scene.
The party is very well attended, and to no one’s surprise, Brom Bones arrives on his favorite horse, “Daredevil”, which is apparently daring and full of mischief. Brom likes them that way. He prefers them to be a little unpredictable and to give him a fight. This is a guy who doesn’t give up easily; enjoys a challenge.
The party carries on, and Ichabod and Katrina dance. It’s uncertain here whether Ichabod is a good dancer or not. Irving says that Ichabod prided himself on his dancing, but also says that to look at him you’d think that he was St. Vitus himself. St. Vitus is the patron saint of dancers and epileptics, so you make the call. I suspect that sometimes Irving (or Mr. Crayon) occasionally speaks with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.
The night ends with stories: a few from he Revolutionary War and the rest ghost stories from the “Sleepy Hollow people”, who are “as usual, doling out their wild and wonderful legends.” Carver writes that Sleepy Hollow breathes out some sort of contagion of “dream and fancies” that infect the surrounding land. It’s rather poetic.
Among the Sleepy Hollow stories is one about a “woman in white” near Raven Rock who can be heard shrieking before a winter storm, having perished there in the snow. For a moment, I thought of poor Ichabod mistaking trees and bushes for white-sheeted specters and wondered. If you’re keen on mythology, then you’ll probably recognize the “woman in white” as a familiar figure. There are numerous legends of lone spirits matching her description. In some cases, she’s analogous to the banshee of Celtic myth: She appears weeping when someone in a family is about to die. In others, she’s just the spirit of a woman who died under tragic circumstances, or loved someone else who did.
There are a couple about the Headless Horseman, too, including one told by Brom in which he nearly bests the Horseman in a race. In Brom’s story, as well as one told by an unnamed guests, the horseman is obliged to disappear at a certain point across a bridge in town. It might not be unreasonable to suspect that this other storyteller was one of Brom’s friends. I think a prank is coming.
Ichabod, ever the gullible fool, shares more witchcraft stories before the night ends. I can only imagine how awkward things might have become if it became apparent that a true believer was in the midst of a group of probably drunk neighbors sharing tall tales after a party. There are times that I feel sorry for Ichabod: He’s always a little out of step.
The party doesn’t go well for him anyway: After a few private words with Katrina, he leaves without as much as a glance at the tantalizing wealth that at one time was ever so near. Clearly despondent, he hops on Gunpowder and rides off. It’s the Witching Hour: midnight, the time when the spirits of the dead are at their most powerful.
Poor, sad Ichabod rides off in the direction of Sleepy Hollow, and as we knew he might be, is nearly paralyzed with fear. After all, the tales told at the party weren't from some far off land: The monsters, ghosts, and murderers so often featured in them were local residents - or at least, that’s what the “old Dutch wives” would have one believe. As would Brom Bones.
The Horseman, the chief demon of Sleepy Hollow, finally appears during the this final ride. Ichabod, feeling a presence behind him, turns and bravely asks the dark figure he sees to identify itself. It, the silhouette of a horseman, remains mute. Ichabod spurs Gunpowder onward, but the mystery figure catches up and joins Ichabod, galloping side by side. A chase begins when the schoolmaster notices the Horseman’s head mounted on the pommel of his saddle, and Gunpowder, spooked runs off in the opposite direction from Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod makes the bridge, but then the Horseman flings his head at the hapless young suitor.
Ichabod’s hat and a smashed pumpkin is found the next day. No Ichabod, though. There’s an epilogue, but why spoil that? You probably knew the rough outline of this tale, but the specific details of the ending I’ll leave to you to find out. Believe me: It’s worth the read.
I found a lot of things in this story that I didn’t expect: a sly sense of humor, a genuinely folksy tone, and some downright gorgeous descriptions of the countryside. It’s a shame that Irving never wrote any more stories about Sleepy Hollow. I’d be interested in hearing more about the history and folklore of the place. There are people who have picked up where Irving left off, though, and taken poor old Ichabod and the Horseman on all manner of wild adventures.You can even visit the real Sleepy Hollow: the residents of North Tarrytown, NY have renamed their town Sleepy Hollow in honor of the story.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is just one of many other stories that the author wrote, many of which are collected in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories. “Rip Van Winkle” is included as well, and so are some Christmas stories, if you’d like to have something seasonal to read in December.