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Click here for Part Three
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Introduction
The Headless Horseman is by far the most famous paranormal figure
from American literature, and although a fictional story it was
based on an actual ghost story from century's ago. An unearthly
and spectral vision of a headless horseman, riding a dark horse
and waving a rapier, sometimes with a jack o-lantern (as a head)
was reportedly seen in the Eighteenth Century.
First published in 1819 "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
is a story by Washington Irving (which first appeared in The Sketch
Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.). Set in New York, its tells the
tale of country school master, Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman.
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The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow
by Washington Irving
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 tranquillity.
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 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.
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 every one 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 considered 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 mill-pond, 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 mill-pond; 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 traveling 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 marvelous, 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 school-house,
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, to 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 booming 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 of her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure
yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought over
from Saar dam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal
a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and
ankle in the country round.
Ichahod 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; an 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.
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