c.

2010
James A. Gardner

What Becomes A Legend Most

Elements of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”—James A. Gardner

In The Cambridge History of American Literature, Washington Irving’s “The

Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is called “an immortal legend of the Hudson” and The Sketch
Book in which it appeared “became an international best–seller . . . [bringing] its author a
measure of fame unequaled by any other American writer of his era,” (Trent et al., pg.
255; Rubin–Dorsky, pg. 393). In Robert Bone’s words, “Sleepy Hollow” is Irving’s
“finest achievement and his most enduring contribution to our literary history,” (Bone, p.
169). Daniel Hoffman calls The Sketch Book, “the first important literary statement of
the themes of native folk character and superstition,” (Myers, p. 345), while Edgar
Wagenknecht contends that “no American writer has been more successful than Irving in
creating a legend,” (Wagenknecht, Moderation Displayed, p.167, 169).

The plot of “Sleepy Hollow” is essentially an account of a Connecticut

schoolteacher who comes to a secluded New York hamlet, ingratiates himself to the local
housewives, and vies for the affections of a wealthy farmer’s daughter, until run out of
town by a rowdy, but beloved local character. The most memorable image in “The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow, so essential to the story’s atmosphere and endurance, though,
is that of the Headless Horseman pursuing the terrified Ichabod Crane down a forest road
at midnight. Without the Horseman as catalyst to Ichabod’s flight, the story is as ordinary
as the summary, above.

To take nothing away from Irving’s accomplishment with “Sleepy Hollow,” it

must be recognized that Irving did not create his legend purely out of his own, singular
artistic vision; in fact, the climactic scene with the Headless Horseman was adapted,
virtually intact, from a German tale. “Sleepy Hollow” is, instead, a skillful amalgam of
pre–existing elements assimilated from many disparate sources. That it is still read and
studied 175 years after its first publication, attests to Irving’s ability to absorb his
influences and mold them into something that strikes the reader as thoroughly American.

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In his pursuit to contribute to an American literature, Irving himself became influential,
likely beyond even his own wildest aspirations.

Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow” is especially notable in light of its contemporary

literature, and the balance of the collection in which it was ultimately published, The
Sketch Book. As noted by Lloyd Daigrepont, in Irving’s time, fiction was something of a
devalued commodity. The “commitment to progress” so prevalent in America at the time
“caused even men of enlightened views such as Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster, and
Timothy Dwight [to look] upon fiction as useless, distracting, or at best merely amusing.”
To Daigrepont, Irving’s “chief concern in writing ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’” was
the lack of “a valid concept of fiction [in] the opening decades of the new republic,”
(Daigrepont, p. 68, 71).

Similarly, Martin Roth cites Irving’s concern with “the question of whether the
creative imagination could take root in a county of such thin traditional soil,” especially
when such leaders of contemporary thought as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson “had
reasoned that the level of economic luxury necessary to foster a class of fine artists was
incompatible with the nature of a democracy,” (Roth, p. 162). Roth sees “Sleepy Hollow”
as nothing less than “Irving’s literary response to the question of whether or not America
could produce an imaginative literature of its own,” (Roth, p. 177). Irving was clearly
aware of the dearth of American tradition on which he could draw, as indicated by his
reference in “Sleepy Hollow” to “a remote period of American history,” just thirty years
ago, 1 (The Sketch Book, henceforth denoted as SB, p. 400).

Irving’s tale of “Sleepy Hollow” may have had its origin in his early experience
with the “witching effect” of the “Kaatskil Mountains” as he floated down the Hudson,
watching the surrounding landscape “undergoing a thousand mutations under the magical
effects of atmosphere,” (Wagenknecht, Moderation Displayed, p.6). Not until many years
after his boyhood exploration of the Hudson and its surrounding environs, though, did
Irving incorporate the setting into his fiction. Some of the themes that later appeared in
“Sleepy Hollow,” however, appeared early in Irving’s writing. As early as 1804, for
instance, “Irving’s comic feud with schoolmasters and natives of Connecticut” could be

1All pagination for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” refers to the Standard English Classics edition of Irving’s Sketch
Book, (Mary E. Litchfield, editor; published by Ginn and Company, 1901).

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seen in his work for The Corrector, the anonymous paper founded by Irving’s brother,
Peter, (Roth, p. 163).

While not an accomplished scholar, Irving does appear to have been sufficiently
well–read to have some literary background to draw upon; he was familiar with Aristotle,
Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, and “knew his Bible thoroughly,” (Wagenknecht, p.
53). Also, he had a “passion for old Dutch stories,” he was apparently familiar with
European chroniclers of the supernatural, and he expressed his intention to “get into the
confidence of every old woman I meet in Germany and get from her, her budget of
wonderful stories,” (Wagenknecht, p. 53–55).

His childhood experiences on the Hudson aside, it was not until Irving left
America that he accumulated most of the components that he would later incorporate into
“Sleepy Hollow,” including numerous “wonderful stories” that he absorbed during his
lengthy stay (from 1815–1832) in the United Kingdom and Europe. Among the lore that
Irving encountered and would later use was the Tam O’ Shanter myth, as portrayed in
Robert Burns’ poem, and the German fables of the Mountain Lord, Rübezahl, (Myers, p.
300). Irving also absorbed “his brother–in–law’s recollections of his early days at
Tarrytown on the Hudson” during a visit with his sister’s family in Birmingham,
England, in 1818, (Myers, p. 298).

Irving struggled with personal and professional concerns during his years abroad.
His first love, Matilda Hoffman, the daughter of the judge under whom Irving served as a
law clerk, died in 1809 but was to remain a significant influence throughout Irving’s life,
(Williams, vol. 1, p. 102–03, 407). Her death “fixed his idle moods of reverie into
feelings about the unseen world,” (Williams, vol. 1, p. 120), possibly heightening his
interest in the supernatural. He was also receptive to mythology; indeed, in the early
eighteen–hundreds Irving had “imagined Santa as a bulky man who smoked a pipe and
wore baggy pants,” introducing lasting elements to secular Christmas tradition and
American folklore, (Shenkman, pg. 13–14). 2

2 Irving was later “mainly responsible” for crediting Christopher Columbus with proving that the world is round, a

concept actually proven by Aristotle and popularized by Plato. In his Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of
Columbus, which was “billed as a biography,” Irving portrayed Columbus seeking to prove that the Earth is round,
whereas his mission was actually to settle the issue of “the width of the [Atlantic] ocean,” (Shenkman, pg. 14).

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 In 1809, before leaving America, Irving had also initiated a major myth of his
own with the creation of Diedrich Knickerbocker. In “one of the cleverest hoaxes in the
history of publishing,” Irving first provided the New York Evening Post with a notice of
the disappearance of “a small, elderly gentleman . . . by the name of Knickerbocker” a
month prior to the “discovery” of the manuscript of Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History of
New York, (Wagenknecht, Moderation Displayed, p. 9). Despite his accomplishment
with the Knickerbocker History—for instance, it is considered by William L. Hedges to
be Irving’s masterpiece—Irving spent the ten years following its publication “torn
between the desire to make literature a full–time commitment and the fear of abandoning
a career in law and business,” (Myers, p. 444, 447).

The decision was taken out of his hands by the bankruptcy, in 1818, of the Irving
family import business, in which Washington was an inactive partner, (Tuttleton, p. xxi).
His new writing began appearing in America in 1819, and was then published as a
collection, The Sketch Book, both in England and America, in 1820. That Irving used a
new pen name, Geoffrey Crayon, rather than his own (or Knickerbocker’s) for this
collection may be indicative of the author’s continued uncertainty about his career
prospects.

Many of the influences Irving absorbed during his years abroad surfaced in the
pages of The Sketch Book, which was largely a collection of observations based on
“Crayon’s” travels, some of which had already been published separately. 3 The major
exceptions were “The Spectre Bridegroom” (which first appeared in November, 1819),
“Rip Van Winkle” (May, 1819), and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (March, 1820), the
latter two of which are widely considered to be Irving’s greatest achievements.

According to Walter Reichart, “The Spectre Bridegroom” is “based entirely on

literary sources,” and an important precursor to “Sleepy Hollow” in terms of recognizing
Irving’s sources and his manner of utilizing them, (Myers, p. 301). Reichart cites two
sources that Irving could reasonably have accessed for “The Spectre Bridegroom.” An
1813 collection, Tales of the Dead, billed as a translation from the German, includes a

3 The Sketch Book includes “26 papers . . . which concern English themes,” including three on English Christmas
celebrations; these three are today the most–read portions of the book, after “The Spectre Bridegroom,” “Rip Van
Winkle,” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” (Wagenknecht, Moderation, p. 175).

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story titled “The Death Bride” which is similar both “in title and content” to Irving’s
story, although it centers on a ghostly bride rather than a spectral groom. Reichart also
asserts that Irving obviously knew Walter Scott’s “William and Helen,” an adaptation of
a famous German ballad, Lenore, by August Bürger, first printed in 1773; in fact,
Reichart considers “The Spectre Bridegroom” a parody upon Lenore. The German ballad
relates a “folk legend” of a soldier, killed in battle, and his sweetheart, who “vainly
awaits his return.” Lenore’s “lamentations summon her lover’s spirit from the grave,”
from where he comes for her in the night, and they ride away together. At midnight, the
soldier is revealed to be a skeleton. With “The Spectre Bridegroom,” Irving “utilized the
theme [of Lenore] but . . . avoided any serious implications,” (Myers, p. 303, 307–08).

“The Spectre Bridegroom” retains its German setting, while “Rip Van Winkle,”
also rich in European lore, is transplanted to take place in America. More than either of
its predecessors, though, “Sleepy Hollow” is a unique pastiche, an extensive integration
of European folklore, American archetypes, and New York settings.

The extent to which “Sleepy Hollow” was inspired directly by any specific source
is debatable. Mary Bowden, for instance, sees “Sleepy Hollow” as a “reprise” of “The
Spectre Bridegroom,” both stories being “basically the same,” (Bowden, p. 72). In each
story, two men are enamored of a wealthy man’s daughter; Starkenfaust (in “The Spectre
Bridegroom”) and Brom Bones each “rely on the effect of a superstitious tale . . . to win
the girl, . . . both ride black horses and . . . both get the girl by means of a prank,”
(Bowden, p. 72–73). While the two stories have other, minor details in common, they
differ so substantially that it is difficult to see “The Spectre Bridegroom” as more than a
minor source for the later story.

The most–striking inspiration for the supernatural elements of “Sleepy Hollow”

is the German folk legend of the Mountain Lord Rübezahl. In his essay, ”Irving’s
German Tour and His Tales,” Henry Pochman briefly notes that Irving knew of the
Rübezahl legends even before his 1823 visit to the German Riesengebirge, “the legendary
home of Rübezahl,” (Pochman, p. 1158). 4 Rübezahl is a notorious “spirit prince” whose
true appearance is unknown, with a “character as changeable as his form” (Lee and

4 Shortly after his visit to the Riesengebirge, Irving referred to his landlord as “old Rübezahl,” (Pochman, p. 1158).

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Carey, pg. 5). The Lee–Carey volume, Silesian Folk Tales (The Book of Rübezahl),
published after Irving’s time, in 1915, collects a number of the better–known Silesian
folk tales, the first such collection of Rübezahl stories translated for American
consumption. The collection emphasizes the Mountain Lord’s “better side,”
concentrating on his “merry prank[s],” while avoiding the spiteful revenge he took on
“mankind for the great injury it inflicted on him,” (Lee and Carey, pg. 6).

One common theme of the Silesian stories is Rübezahl’s (often fierce)

protectiveness of his domain. Also, these stories continually invoke Rübezahl as a
generally–unseen threat, an entity, like the Headless Horseman, largely defined by his
reputation, a reputation spread by word–of–mouth. While the Lee–Carey collection
softens the negative aspects of Rübezahl’s nature, the stories contain other elements that
echo in Sleepy Hollow’s Headless Horseman: the Mountain Lord is known for his
“vicious pranks,” he is reputed to have “silenced” those who cross him, and is dismissed
(interestingly enough, by a college student) as “a mere fancy of the brain, a belief that
exists only in spinning rooms when maidens frighten one another with tales of horror,”
(Lee–Carey, p. 31, 41, 46).

It is most likely that, among the “marvelous stories” he collected, Irving first
heard the Rübezahl tales in a German “spinning room,” rather than having read them
himself. Several Rübezahl stories were among Johann Karl August Musäus’s five–
volume Volksmärchen der Deutschen which, written in German, were not directly
accessible to Irving, but were a probable source for the stories he heard. 5 Unlike the
stories in the Lee–Carey collection, Musäus’s “Legenden von Rübezahl” (“Legends of
Number–Nip”) combine idyllic settings with a sense of “satire [that] emerges
predominantly in their form of travesty and parody, explicitly or indirectly employed to
ridicule such popular genres as the adventure romances,” (Musäus, p. x, xi).

Just as the Silesian mountain setting is central to the Rübezahl tales, in “The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Irving places his influences in a setting that is an integral
element of his story. Sleepy Hollow has remained immune to “the great torrent of

5Three of Musäus’s stories were included in Thomas Carlyle’s 1827 edition of German Romances, volume 1, which Irving
may have read. None of Carlyle’s adaptations were Rübezahl tales, but they did exhibit features that characterize
Musäus’s “Legenden von Rübezahl.”

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migration and improvement [that] sweeps by them unobserved,” like “a little [nook] of
still water [bordering] a rapid stream,” a place unaffected by outside influences (SB, p.
400). It is an environment of “uniform tranquillity” where noontime finds “all nature . . .
particularly quiet” until disturbed by an interloper, such as the squirrel–hunting narrator,
whose gunshot echoes angrily and startles even himself, (SB, p. 397–98).

Sleepy Hollow “is a self–contained world . . . [where] the people . . . are as much
a part of the landscape as the natural growth of the valley,” (Rubin–Dorsky, “The Value
of Storytelling,” p. 403). Throughout the story, Irving links the people of the area with
the unchanging, natural surroundings; the narrator wonders if, years after his visit, he
would not still find “the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered
bosom,” (SB, p. 400). This background—a “little retired Dutch [valley] . . . embosomed
in the great State of New York, [where] population, manners, and customs remain fixed,”
(SB, p. 400)—is essential to “Sleepy Hollow” succeeding as more than a romance with
supernatural trappings, like the “The Spectre Bridegroom.”

The supernatural is a strong presence in Sleepy Hollow, where the people are
given to all manner of “marvellous beliefs,” including that of a “dominant spirit” about
the area, an “apparition of a figure on horseback without a head . . . the ghost of a
Hessian trooper whose head had been carried away by a cannon ball . . . during the
revolutionary war,” (SB, p. 398–99). The “galloping ghost” said to haunt the actual
Tarrytown area was among the folk stories Irving learned from his brother–in–law,
(Myers, p. 298). Irving’s incorporation of this superstition in “Sleepy Hollow” not only
links his story to the rich folk tradition of Europe, with its echoes of the “dominant spirit”
of Rübezahl, it also grounds his story in the region’s, admittedly brief, history. While the
area may have been “bewitched” by a “German doctor during the early days of the
settlement,” (SB, p. 298), it is now haunted by a casualty of America’s revolution.

With the Hessian reference, Irving evokes the war early in the story, making use
of what little history he had available to him, just before introducing another unwelcome
interloper, the itinerant Yankee schoolteacher, Ichabod Crane. The schoolteacher is not
only an intruder in the insular community, he is set on “improving” these people of fixed

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manners and customs. Irving, as noted, had something of a history of ridiculing
Connecticut Yankees; with Crane, he both skewers and indicts the subject of his ridicule.

Irving also links Crane with nature, here to demonstrate how the Yankee
schoolteacher is in opposition with the natural world. At best, Crane might be mistaken
for “some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield”—in other words, a tool in service of the
agrarian community, (a teacher for their children, for instance), who abandons his post to
spirit away one of their women, (SB, p. 400, italics mine). At worst, he might be seen as
nothing less than “the genius of famine descending upon the earth,” (SB, p. 400–01). He
is further described with unflattering, animalistic attributes: long (simian) arms, huge
(elephantine) ears, “a long snipe nose,” (SB, p. 400). His arms flap like wings as he rides,
his elbows stick out “like grasshoppers’,” the grasshopper, not coincidentally, being a
type of locust linked with pestilence in the Bible. 6 The sight of Ichabod and his
(borrowed) steed “was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad
daylight,” an apparition with its midnight equivalent in the Headless Hessian, (SB, p.
417; italics mine).

Ichabod Crane not only represents a type of character that Irving wanted to
caricature, (continuing his “comic feud” with the people of Connecticut), he was modeled
on a specific, real–life counterpart, a tutor named Jesse Merwin, with whom Irving had
become acquainted in 1809, (Williams, vol. 1, p. 408, note). 7 Surprisingly, the original of
Ichabod not only was aware of his inspiration, he “was always proud of the delineation”;
a letter from Merwin, found among Irving’s papers after his death, was “endorsed in
Irving’s own handwriting—‘From Jesse Merwin, the original of Ichabod Crane,’” (Bruce,
p. 147–48).

While Wallace Bruce finds Merwin’s pride indicative of Irving’s “kindly . . . wit
and humor,” (Bruce, p. 148), Charles Dudley Warner believed that “Sleepy Hollow”
would have been better if Irving “had displayed a little touch of pity for Ichabod Crane,”
allowing him at least a bit of pathos, (Wagenknecht, pg. 133). Instead, Crane is cast in a
negative light throughout the story, called a hero only sarcastically, and then when he

6 “If there be dearth in the land, if there be pestilence, if there be blasting or mildew, locusts or caterpillars . . . if I
command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people,” (2 Chronicles 6:28, 7:13).
7 “Merwin’s identity with the Yankee schoolmaster of The Sketch Book is proved conclusively by a manuscript note in

Irving’s own hand,” (Williams, vol. 1, p. 429, note).

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admires, not the “bevy of buxom lasses,” but the “ample charms of a genuine Dutch
country tea table in the sumptuous time of autumn,” (SB, p. 420). 8 His defining
personality traits, those which lead to his downfall, are his acquisitiveness, his
cowardliness, and his gullibility.

These traits define all Crane’s interactions with the people of Sleepy Hollow.
Although he occasionally helps the farmers with “the lighter labors of their farms,” he
learns nothing either of the true workings or the value of the farms, and so fails to truly
integrate himself into the community by serving any essential purpose, beyond his self–
serving ingratiation into their households. He befriends his elder students only to gain
entrée to their homes, if they “happen to have pretty sisters, or good housewives for
mothers noted for the comforts of the cupboard,” (SB, p. 402). The housewives find
Crane useful—perhaps even tolerable—only as a gazetteer for local gossip, as a source of
stories from Cotton Mather’s History of Witchcraft and “marvellous events” from his
native Connecticut, and as a receptive audience for their own ghost stories. 9 It is, in fact,
from these housewives that Crane first hears of the Headless Horseman, (SB, p. 405,
425).

The women’s ghost stories, and the men’s elaboration upon them, are
instrumental to Crane’s intimidation by the Headless Horseman. With the quilting frolic
at the Van Tassel farm and the attendant stories of the supernatural, Irving begins the
most conspicuous and noteworthy synthesis of his sources. From here on out, Irving
increasingly develops an integration of character and setting that adds to the depth of the
conflict between Ichabod Crane and Sleepy Hollow, both as a locale and as a way of life.

The “castle of Heer Van Tassel” is a “stronghold” on the banks of the Hudson
from which the people of Sleepy Hollow launch their defense of their domain, (SB, p.
419, 407). While the host of this merrymaking, Baltus Van Tassel, is “jolly as the harvest
moon,” oblivious to any threat, the livestock seem to be instinctively aware of the need
for self–defense: the geese are assembled in a “stately squadron,” the turkeys have

8 This is also reminiscent (albeit probably coincidentally) of the Rübezahl story, “The Braggart’s Punishment,” in which
the title character is treated sarcastically by the narrator, including an ironic reference to “our hero.”
9 The reader must wonder to what degree the image of Crane listening to ghost stories told by the “old Dutch wives” (SB,

p. 405) is based on Irving absorbing “wonderful stories” from “every old woman” he met in during his German
excursion, (Wagenknecht, Moderation Displayed, p. 54–55).

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formed “regiments,” the pigs are in “troops,” and the “gallant cock” is strutting
protectively before the barn door, (SB, p. 408). Even the barn’s weathervane is a
“wooden warrior . . . armed with a sword,” (SB, p. 413). This is the “scene of rural
wealth on which [Crane] had so often gloated,” and in his “devouring mind’s eye,” Crane
has reduced the livestock to sumptuous victuals, (SB, p. 426, 408).

The supposed object of Ichabod’s affections, Katrina Van Tassel, is characterized

in terms that link her both to nature and to food: she is a “blooming lass of fresh eighteen,
plump as a partridge, ripe and . . . rosy–cheeked as one of her father’s peaches,” (SB, p.
407, italics mine). Crane’s plans for Katrina, like those for the farm’s livestock, run
counter to the Van Tassel’s interests; Crane imagines Katrina as his wife, (with himself
as Van Tassel’s heir), abandoning the family farm and heading for new pastures in
“Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord knows where,” (SB, p. 408). Crane envisions himself
as “lord of all this . . . luxury and splendor,” using his inherited wealth not to become part
of the community, but for conversion to liquid capital, (SB, p. 421, 409). His aspirations
reveal Crane as disloyal to his profession—he envisions himself turning his back on “any
itinerant pedagogue . . . that should dare to call him comrade,” (SB, p. 421)—and reveals
his true character as “the farmers’ greatest enemy—and a recognizable villain in the early
Republic—the land speculator,” (Rubin–Dorsky, Adrift in the Old World, p. 117–18).
Though not so credited by the narrator, Katrina seems, if not aware of his scheme, at least
immune to what Crane sees as his exotic appeal. Although the content of their tête–à–tête
is not known, she clearly turns him away. Irving suggests that Katrina’s encouragement
of Crane’s interest may have been “all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival,”
Brom Bones, (SB, p. 426).

The setting for this gathering, the exemplar of the community’s way of life, has
been identified as the home to an actual Mynheer Van Tassel, in a community
[Tarrytown] known for its “haunted spots and twilight superstitions,” (Myers, p. 298).
Likewise, according to information “in possession of Jesse Merwin’s grandson, G.D.
Merwin,” Irving was rumored to have planned to marry the original of Katrina Van
Tassel, (Williams, vol. 1, p. 429–30, note). The local hero was drawn directly from
Irving’s “brother–in–laws’s recollections of his early days at Tarrytown . . . and the story
of one Brom Bones, a wild blade who boasted of having once met the devil on a return

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from a nocturnal frolic,” (Myers, p. 298). Bones was further identified by Irving’s
brother, Pierre, as “a wag of Tarrytown,” probably Brom Von Allstyne, who “boasted of
once having met the devil . . . and run a race with him for a bowl of milk,” (Hoffman, p.
428, note).

The Brom of “Sleepy Hollow” may not have originated the story of the Headless
Horseman, but he freely embellishes it. Crane’s belief in this particular ghost story is
virtually ensured by his gullible nature and his appetite for the supernatural; after all, the
tale is told of how even “a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts,” old Brouwer, had met the
horseman, (SB, p. 424). With this preface, Brom tells of besting the Horseman in a race
for a bowl of punch, making light of the “galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey,” (SB, p.
425). By the time a “chopfallen” Crane departs the party “with the air of one who had
been sacking the henroost” (as, indeed, he aimed to do), he has been inundated with tales
of the “haunted region” he is about to traverse, (SB, p. 426, 423). Irving has set the stage
for the climactic scene with elements from his own past, interwoven with his brother–in–
laws’ reminiscences, along with newly–minted American myths. He concludes his legend
with a return to European folklore, which he firmly places in the Sleepy Hollow milieu.

At the witching hour of Ichabod’s last ride through Sleepy Hollow, he comes
upon Major André’s tree, appropriately, in light of Crane’s plans, a symbol of betrayal
and deceit. While André, a British officer hanged as a spy, may have been a scapegoat
(Bone, p. 173), the legends he inspired are illustrative of the difficulty in separating fact
from fiction, (Owens, p. 20). Crane’s fear of this myth–shrouded Revolutionary War
landmark reinforces his willingness to believe in the incredible. 10

The further Crane rides, the more apparent is his isolation—the barking of a
watchdog, man’s best friend, is faint and distant; the only “signs of life” near him are the
“melancholy chirps” from a cricket and the croaking of a bullfrog, (SB, p. 427). Nature
mocks him, as his whistle is answered by a blast of wind through the branches of Major
André’s tree. He is more than physically alone; he is philosophically isolated from the
people of Sleepy Hollow who live in harmony with nature.

10 It may be worth noting that, in this account, Major André’s is a tulip tree, the tulip being associated with the Dutch.

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 Near the locust trees of the haunted church, the grasshopper–like Yankee
encounters the object of his fears, a ghost straight out of the Old World. Without
further elaborating on the source, Henry Pochman identified the Legenden von
Rübezahl as the source of Ichabod’s encounter with the Headless Horseman, “the
climactic incident . . . [of] “‘Sleepy Hollow,’” (Pochman, p. 1158). Walter Reichart
further identifies the derivation of the “Sleepy Hollow” climax as “the adventure of a
simple–minded and credulous coachman,” (a postilion rather than a pedagogue),
which Musäus used only as an introduction for one of his fairy tales, (Myers, p. 300).

The coachman John’s encounter with Number–Nip [i.e., Rübezahl] and Ichabod’s
with the Headless Horseman are quite similar in several passages: “All the stories of
Number–Nip [that John had] formerly devoured with such eager attention, came
rushing at once into his mind,” while “all the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had
heard in the afternoon” came “crowding” upon Ichabod’s “recollection.” John found
himself “traversing the stage where these adventures [of Number–Nip which he had
heard] had happened,” while Ichabod found himself “approaching the very place
where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid.”

For John, fear makes his hair become “stiff like bristles”; the hair of “the
affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror.” John’s adversary is a “a jet–
black figure, of a size exceeding that of man,” wearing a “Spanish tippet,” while
Ichabod faces a “huge, misshapen, black and towering . . . monster . . . muffled in a
cloak.” (The creature John meets is on foot, though, where the wraith of Sleepy
Hollow is “mounted on a black horse of powerful frame.”) As he appears to John,
Rübezahl has “an head as well as other people, only he did not wear it, according to
the usual fashion, between his shoulders, but carried it under his arm, just as if it had
been a lap–dog.” The Horseman’s head, “which should have rested on his shoulders,
was carried before him on the pommel of the saddle.” Ichabod attempts to continue
singing a psalm; John begins “the salutation appointed to be addressed to all good
spirits, Angels and Ministers.”

“Before [John] could speak it out,” though, “the monster took his head from under
his arm, and hurled it” at the coachman, striking him “right on the forehead,” and

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 sending him “[tumbling] headlong from the box over the forewheel.” As the “parched
tongue clove to the roof of [Ichabod’s] mouth,” Ichabod sees the Headless Horseman
“in the very act of hurling his head at him.” Ichabod is struck in the “cranium,” and
left in the “dust.” While also “stretched in the dust,” John receives “a severe stroke
with a club,” one final injury Ichabod is spared. It is only later that the monstrous
“head” hurled at John is recognized “for a huge hollowed out gourd filled with sand
and stones,” as the Horseman’s “head” is found to be a “shattered pumpkin,” (Myers,
p. 300; SB, p. 432; Rübezahl references, Myers, p. 316–17).

As mentioned above, Irving was likely familiar with the Tam O’ Shanter’s myth,
and the “bridge over which, according to [Tam’s] belief . . . fiends may not cross” may
have come from Robert Burns’ poem, (Myers, p. 300), incorporating another source into
a scene lifted, virtually intact, from the Rübezahl tale. There are certainly echoes of
Tam’s belief in Crane’s thought, during his pursuit by the Horseman, that reaching the
bridge will lead him to safety. Crane’s misconception is that the bridge over the haunted
stream (as it is considered by the locals) functions to keep the “fiends” contained. More
accurately, it acts as a barrier to unwanted outsiders; while Crane does make his escape, it
is Sleepy Hollow that is saved.

“What chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin,” Crane wonders, “which
could ride upon the wings of the wind,” (SB, p. 429). Obviously, there is no escape when
the ghosts exist only in one’s own gullible mind. Crane, although named for a bird,
(albeit an appropriately ungainly one), cannot take flight on the wings of the wind; he is
rejected by this place that is in harmony with nature.

Sleepy Hollow is female–centered—Tarrytown itself is so named by “the good

housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to
linger about the village tavern on market days,” (SB, p. 397)—as is Crane’s experience
there. Crane’s gullibility is his own undoing, compounded by his insincere attempts to be
embraced by the women of the “embosomed” valley. The tales the women tell establish
the basis for Brom’s own Horseman story, and for his midnight masquerade, a prank that
some see as nothing less than a figurative neutering of “threatening masculine
interlopers” by “the emasculated, headless ‘dominant spirit’ of the region,” (Plummer and

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Nelson, p. 175). The narrator himself “establishes women as the greatest source of fear
for men: ‘[Ichabod] would have passed a pleasant life . . . 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,’” (Plummer and Nelson, p. 179).

Certainly, Crane’s disregard for Katrina’s feelings, and his discounting her
intelligence, not crediting her with the ability to recognize him for the opportunist he is,
could be seen as sufficient cause for the failure of his plans. It is unfortunate that we are
not told more about Katrina’s reaction to the Yankee schoolteacher, such that we may
better understand her reasons for rejecting him, but this would not be consistent with the
narrative point of view. As it is, her rejection would have been sufficient cause for Crane
to move on, rendering the encounter with the Headless Horseman, unnecessary. Of
course, that is not the story Irving set out to tell. Had Irving not incorporated the
supernatural, it is doubtful that he would have labeled the story a “legend,” and unlikely
that would we would be reading it today.

While it is virtually indisputable that Irving did not, himself, read the Rübezahl
stories, but rather heard them, he most likely became familiar with these tales as
interpreted by Musäus, the chief popularizer of these tales. It may be a credit to Irving’s
ability as an assimilator that he was able to incorporate in “Sleepy Hollow” some of the
more elusive motifs Musäus brought to the German legends. It may also be largely
coincidental, a common appreciation of, and facility with the elements of legend shared
by the two authors.

Though not identified by either Reichart or Pochman, one of the Rübezahl stories
in particular, “The Horse Dealer” (in the Lee–Carey collection), shares with “Sleepy
Hollow” a focus on avarice met with appropriate punishment, and suggests the villain’s
ongoing role as an admonition against similar offenses. For trying to deceive the
Mountain Lord, the dishonest, traveling horse dealer is turned into a statue and adorned
with a sign attesting to his disreputable nature. Crane escapes with the comparatively–
light punishment of banishment. “The old country wives . . . the best judges of these
matters,” though, see to it that Crane is remembered as having been “spirited away by
supernatural means,” and this becomes “a favorite story . . . about the neighborhood,”

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(SB, p. 434). Like the horse dealer, Crane becomes a story, forever associated with his
greed and gluttony, a warning to would–be deceivers.

Irving and Musäus also share an ambiguous approach to the supernatural. As

Ulrich Scheck writes in introducing Carlyle’s translations, in Musäus’s telling of the
Rübezahl stories the “status of the supernatural [is] ambiguous,” (Musäus, p. x).
Similarly, although Irving has Brom Bones “burst into heartily laughter” whenever
Crane’s story is told, and to know more about the matter than he chooses to tell (SB, p.
433–34), the existence of the Headless Horseman is never explicitly discounted. Just as
Musäus’s stories of Rübezahl are “neither folk nor fairy tales in a narrow sense”
(Musäus, p. x), but are rooted in the everyday life of the area, the fantastic elements of
“Sleepy Hollow” are hearsay and do not preclude the story from remaining “rationally
accountable,” (Aderman, p. 16). Nonetheless, the narrator himself casts doubt on the
story’s credibility, saying he does not “believe one–half of it,” (SB, p. 436). Where
Musäus’s ambiguity about the supernatural, as Scheck says, prohibits “unequivocal
categorization” of his tales, Irving labels his tale a “legend” while maintaining a tone of
realism, even disparaging the supernatural, especially in his treatment of the gullible
Crane.

Finally, Scheck alludes to a “saturation with utilitarian principles” that

“distinguishes [Musäus’s tales] from rococo idylls,” (Musäus p. xi). Although Scheck is
referring, specifically, to stories outside those treated by Lee and Carey in their Rübezahl
collection, there too, can we see Rübezahl consistently rewarding utility. In the story
“Three Students,” Rübezahl is also seen punishing an aesthete (the student who doubts
the Mountain Lord’s existence), in accordance with the utilitarian preference for
practicality over aesthetics; the episode is especially prominent as one of the rare acts of
vengeance in this collection. Likewise, the implications of utilitarian thinking, both
positive and negative, are present in Irving’s idyllic environment. The people of Sleepy
Hollow are best rid of Crane—his banishment constitutes the greatest good for the
greatest number of people—even though some of the children, like Hans Van Ripper’s,
will be denied further schooling. Crane also “represents the modern debasement of
imagination [as embodied in the storytellers of Sleepy Hollow] by materialism,” bringing
to [Sleepy Hollow] this “pious utilitarianism . . . the idea of progress,” (Daigrepont, p.

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72). And progress is anathema to “little nooks of still water” such as Sleepy Hollow,
which border the “rapid stream[s]” from whence Crane came, and where he is bound,
(SB, p. 400).

There have certainly been eras and contexts in American history in which
“progress” was not a derogatory term, but in his time and situation, Ichabod Crane forces
the “question of the value of change and progress if they must be bought at the price of
the destruction of stability and order,” (Myers, p. 407). Crane is the embodiment of “a
particularly American, entrepreneurial idea of progress,” (Myers, p. 485). In this, he
prefigured pioneers like Daniel Boone who “wanted to turn beautiful abundance into cash
in order to buy more of nature’s bounty and do the same once again” which, as Haskell
Springer writes, is a “sad version of the American Dream,” (Myers, p. 485).

The “sad version,” though, is only one possible interpretation. In the “onion skin
layers of tales told and retold” in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” (Daigrepont, p. 78),
the “facts” are filtered through a number of interpreters before reaching the reader. As
immortalized by the “good housewives” of Sleepy Hollow—who, as victors, write
history as they see it—Crane is not only the aspiring entrepreneur, he is something of an
tragic figure, a would–be conqueror who is turned back, a “hero” undone by his own
nature. The unidentified narrator, however, tries to wrest final interpretive authority away
from the Sleepy Hollow storytellers, putting a positive spin on Crane’s humiliation, as he
reveals that Crane became a New York lawyer and, ultimately, a justice. Several more
layers (Knickerbocker and Crayon) removed, however, the author’s disdain is apparent in
the telling detail that, although Crane became a judge, he sat the bench of the Ten Pound
Court, the least–significant small claims court of the day, a final insult to the ambitious
Yankee.

In his appreciation of Washington Irving’s humor, Martin Roth expresses the

opinion that Irving’s despair over his contemporary American literary culture arose from
his belief that that impoverished culture “had fallen into the hands of the Yankees and the
spiritual traits which they represented,” (Roth, p. 177). As we see in “The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow,” Irving saw those traits leading to a voracious acquisitiveness that not
only stifled art and threatened nature, but was a menace to what Irving saw as the ideal

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American way of life. In fact, when Irving returned to America in 1832, he settled south
of Tarrytown and, in 1853, bought a house formerly owned by a Jacobus van Tassell,
(Owens, p. 52). Irving integrated stories, learned in England, that originated in the
Hudson Valley, and incorporated elements of German folk tales intermingled with an
apocrypha about a headless European mercenary fighting in America’s Revolutionary
War, to tell a story that both embellished America’s brief past and helped inspire the
nation’s new literary tradition. It is not that Irving created “an American setting so
genuine and realistic” (Myers, p. 299) alone that makes “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
so noteworthy, but that he created it while paying tribute to his influences, in the most
substantial way: by ensuring their survival.

References:

Aderman, Ralph M. (editor). Washington Irving Reconsidered: A Symposium, [Hartford:

Transcendental Books, 1969]
Bone, Robert A. “Irving’s Headless Hessian: Prosperity and the Inner Life,” American Quarterly,
volume XV, (Summer 1963), p. 167–175.
Bowden, Mary Weatherspoon. Washington Irving, [Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981]
Bruce, Wallace. Along the Hudson With Washington Irving, [Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: A.V. Haight
Company, 1913]
Daigrepont, Lloyd M. “Ichabod Crane: Inglorious Man of Letters,” Early American Literature, vol.
XIX, (1984), p. 68–81.
Flanagan, John T. and Arthur Palmer Hudson (editors). Folklore in American Literature,
[Evanston, Illinois–White Plains, New York: Row, Peterson and Company, 1958]
Lee, James and James T. Carey. Silesian Folk Tales (The Book of Rübezahl), [New York: American
Book Company, 1915]
Litchfield, Mary E. (editor). Irving’s Sketch Book, [Boston: Ginn and Company, 1901]
Lohafer, Susan and Jo Ellyn Clarey (editors). Short Story Theory at a Crossroads, [Baton Rouge
and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1989]
Musäus, Johann Karl August, 1735–1787. Stories by Musäus and Fouque / translated by Thomas
Carlyle, [Columbia, SC: Camden House, Inc., 1991]
Myers, Andrew B. (editor). A Century of Commentary on the Works of Washington Irving, 1860–
1974, [Tarrytown, N.Y.: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1976]
Owens, William A. Pocantico Hills 1609 • 1959, [Tarrytown, N.Y.: Sleepy Hollow Restorations,
1960]
Plummer, Laura and Michael Nelson, “‘Girls can take care of themselves’: Gender and
Storytelling in Washington Irving’s ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’,” Studies in Short Fiction,
volume 30 (1993), p. 175–84.

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Pochman, Henry A., “Irving’s German Tour and His Tales,” Publications of the Modern Language
Association of America, volume XlV (December, 1930), p. 1150–87.
Pochman, Henry A., “Irving’s German Sources in The Sketch Book,” Studies in Philology, volume
XXVII (1930), p. 477–507.
Roth, Martin. Comedy and America: The Lost World of Washington Irving, [Port Washington,
N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1976]
Rubin–Dorsky, Jeffrey. Adrift in the Old World: The Psychological Pilgrimage of Washington
Irving, [Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988]
Rubin–Dorsky, Jeffrey. “The Value of Storytelling: ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and ‘The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow’ in the Context of The Sketch Book,” Modern Philology, volume 82, (May, 1985), p. 393–
406.
Shenkman, Richard. Legends, Lies & Cherished American History, [New York: William Morrow
and Company, Inc., 1988]
Trent, W.P., J. Erskine, S.P. Sherman, C.V. Doren (editors). The Cambridge History of American
Literature, [New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933]
Tuttleton, James W. (editor). Washington Irving: The Critical Reaction, [New York: AMS Press,
1993]
Wagenknecht, Edward. Washington Irving: Moderation Displayed, [New York: Oxford
University Press, 1962]
Williams, Stanley T. The Life of Washington Irving, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1935]

c. 2010 James A. Gardner

All rights reserved.

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