Reading the short story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", by Washington Irving has been one of those experiences where I think to myself, why did I wait so long to read this author? I have the Modern Library edition,which contains many other stories by Irving and I will definitely be reading more by him.
According to the introduction, "Washington Irving is believed by many to have created the genre of short story in America, mixing superstition and history, the European tradition of fairy tales and folktales, and local Indian legends. The often humorous and ironic tone in these stories, which is the familiar form of legend, is woven into a tapestry with the very real corporeal world." Irving's story is wonderfully descriptive and atmospheric. The perfect story to read when there is a chill in the air, fallen leaves beneath your feet and Halloween just around the corner. I'm glad that I saved it to very nearly last in my short story reads for Carl's RIP Challenge.
Although I don't recollect ever having read the story when I was young, it is one of those fables that seems to be told to every school child at some point in their education. The story is set in a Dutch settlement in New York state called Sleepy Hollow. Surely everyone has heard of the Headless Horseman who lost his head to a cannonball in the Revolutionary War and haunts Sleepy Hollow? Priggish school master, Ichabod Crane, teaches the school children in this tiny glen, where ghost stories and tall tales are ubiquitous.
"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 falls for the lovely Katrina Van Tassel, a wealthy farmer's daughter. I wasn't sure which attracted him more--Katrina's beauty, or the bounteous farm she would inherit (his stomach seemed to know no depths). His rival for her affections, Brom Bones, is "the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood". When Ichabod disappears near the bridge to the Old Dutch Church after a dance at Van Tassel's farm, where the Headless Horseman is known to make his nightly run, it's uncertain just who he met.
I found the descriptions of Ichabod highly amusing. For those who have read or are in the process of reading Don Quixote you might see a few things in common between Ichabod and the famous knight. Here he is contemplating how to woo the fair Katrina.
"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."
This is an absolutely wonderful short story. I don't know whether this is true or not, but I read that "it is among the earliest American fiction still read today". You can read the story online here.