# The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

_Washington Irving_ · 67 min read · ages 8-12

A lanky schoolmaster named Ichabod Crane courts Katrina Van Tassel in the enchanted valley of Sleepy Hollow, vying with the burly Brom Bones for her hand. Riding home alone one night, Ichabod is pursued by a headless rider and vanishes, leaving only his hat and a smashed pumpkin on the bank beyond the church bridge.

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In one of those wide coves that notch the eastern shore of the Hudson, at the broad reach of the river the old Dutch navigators called the Tappan Zee, where they always prudently took in sail and asked the protection of St. Nicholas before they crossed, there lies a small market town, or country landing. Some people call it Greensburg, but it is better and more properly known by the name of Tarry Town. The name was given, we are told, in the old days by the good housewives of the surrounding farms, on account of the stubborn habit their husbands had of tarrying at the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may. I do not vouch for the fact; I only mention it for the sake of being exact and truthful. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles off, there is a little valley, or rather a 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 enough murmur to lull you to sleep, and the occasional whistle of a quail or the tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in on the even stillness.

I remember that when I was a boy my first attempt at shooting squirrels was in a grove of tall walnut trees that shades one side of that valley. I had wandered into it at noon, when all of nature is particularly quiet, and I was startled by the roar of my own gun as it broke the Sunday hush around me and came rolling back, prolonged and angrier at every echo. If I should ever want a retreat where I might steal away from the world and its distractions and dream quietly through what was left of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than that little valley.

Because of the drowsy repose of the place, and the particular character of its people, who are descended from the first Dutch settlers, this sheltered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its country boys are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys all through the neighboring farms. A drowsy, dreaming influence seems to hang over the land and to soak into the very air. Some say the place was put under a spell by a German doctor in the earliest days of the settlement; others, that an old Native American chief, the prophet and wise man of his tribe, held his councils there before Henry Hudson ever sailed up the river. Certain it is that the place is still ruled by some bewitching power that holds the minds of the good people there in a spell and keeps them walking in a perpetual daydream. They are given to every kind of marvelous belief; they fall into trances and see visions; they often see strange sights and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood is thick with local stories, haunted places and twilight superstitions. Stars shoot and meteors flare across that valley more often than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with all nine of her foals, seems to have chosen it for her favorite playground.

The ruling 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. Some say it is the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head was carried off by a cannonball in some nameless battle of the Revolutionary War, and who is seen now and then by the country people hurrying through the gloom of night as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley. He rides the neighboring roads as well, and above all he keeps to the ground near a certain church not far off. Indeed, some of the most reliable historians of those parts, men who have been careful in gathering and comparing the drifting facts about this specter, claim that the trooper’s body was buried in that churchyard, and that the ghost rides out at night to the scene of the battle in search of his head; and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes sweeps along the Hollow, like a blast at midnight, comes of his being late and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.

That is the general drift of this legend, which has furnished the material for many a wild story in that region of shadows, and the specter is known at every country fireside by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

It is worth noting that the dreaming turn of mind I have described is not confined to the people born in the valley. It is breathed in, without their knowing it, by everyone who lives there for a time. However wide awake they may have been before they came into that sleepy region, they are sure before long to draw in the bewitched air and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams and see apparitions.

I speak of this peaceful spot with all possible praise, for it is in little sheltered Dutch valleys like this, tucked here and there into the great State of New York, that the people, the manners and the customs stay exactly as they were, while the great flood of migration and improvement that is forever changing the rest of this restless country sweeps past them unnoticed. They are like those little nooks of still water at the edge of a rapid stream, where you may see a straw or a bubble riding quietly at anchor, or turning slowly round in its make-believe harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the current going by. Many years have passed since I walked in the drowsy shade of Sleepy Hollow, but I doubt whether I should not still find the same trees and the same families growing quietly in its sheltered lap.

In this out-of-the-way corner of nature there lived, at a distant period of American history (that is to say, some thirty years ago), a worthy fellow by the name of Ichabod Crane, who stayed, or, as he put it himself, “tarried,” in Sleepy Hollow for the purpose of teaching the children of the neighborhood. He came from Connecticut, a state that supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends out every year its legions of frontier woodsmen and country schoolmasters. The name of Crane was not unsuited to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lanky, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, and feet that might have served for shovels; his whole frame was hung together very loosely indeed. His head was small and flat on top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe of a nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched on his spindle of a neck to show which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the ridge of a hill on a windy day, his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, you might have taken him for the spirit of Famine coming down upon the earth, or for a scarecrow that had run away from a cornfield.

His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, roughly built of logs, the windows partly glazed and partly patched with pages torn from old copybooks. When it stood empty it was most ingeniously secured with a twisted withe through the door handle and stakes set against the window shutters, so that although a thief could get in with perfect ease, he would find himself in some difficulty getting out again. The architect, Yost Van Houten, had most likely borrowed the idea from the mystery of an eel trap. The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant spot, just at the foot of a wooded hill, with a brook running close by and a formidable birch tree growing at one end of it. From there, on a drowsy summer day, you might hear the low murmur of his pupils going over their lessons, like the hum of a beehive, broken now and then by the master’s voice raised in warning or command, or by the appalling sound of the birch as he urged some slow loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. To tell the truth, he was a conscientious man, and always kept in mind the golden rule, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” Ichabod Crane’s scholars were certainly not spoiled.

I would not have anyone imagine, however, that he was one of those cruel little tyrants of the schoolroom who take joy in the smarting of their subjects. On the contrary, he handed out justice with discrimination rather than severity, taking the burden off the backs of the weak and laying it on the backs of the strong. Your slight, nervous boy, who flinched at the least flourish of the rod, was passed over with indulgence, and the claims of justice were satisfied instead by a double portion laid on some tough, wrong-headed, broad-bottomed little Dutch fellow, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen under the birch. All this he called “doing his duty by their parents,” and he never delivered a punishment without adding the assurance, so very comforting to the smarting boy, 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 older boys, and on holiday afternoons he would escort some of the smaller ones home, particularly those who happened to have pretty sisters, or mothers who were good housekeepers and famous for the comforts of the cupboard. It was only sensible for him to stay on good terms with his pupils. The income from his school was small, hardly enough to keep him in daily bread, for he was an enormous eater, and, lanky though he was, he had the swallowing powers of an anaconda. To help out his keep he was, as the country custom went in those parts, boarded and lodged in the houses of the farmers whose children he taught. He lived with each of them in turn, a week at a time, going the rounds of the neighborhood with all his worldly goods tied up in a cotton handkerchief.

So that all this might not be too heavy on the purses of his country patrons, who are apt to think the cost of schooling a grievous burden and schoolmasters mere idlers, he had various ways of making himself both useful and agreeable. He helped the farmers now and then with the lighter work of their farms, helped to make hay, mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows in from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the lordly dignity and absolute power with which he ruled his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and obliging. He won the favor of the mothers by petting the children, especially the youngest; and, like the bold lion of the old rhyme that so magnanimously held the lamb, he would sit with a child on one knee and rock a cradle with his foot for hours at a stretch.

Besides all his other occupations, he was the singing master of the neighborhood, and picked up many a bright shilling by teaching the young people to sing psalms. It was no small matter of vanity to him on Sundays to take his place at the front of the church gallery with a band of chosen singers, where, in his own opinion, he carried off the honors completely from the parson. Certain it is that his voice rang out far above all the rest of the congregation, and there are odd quavers still to be heard in that church, which may even be heard half a mile off, quite across the millpond on a still Sunday morning, and which are said to come down in a direct line from the nose of Ichabod Crane. So, by all these little makeshifts, in the ingenious way that is commonly called “by hook or by crook,” the worthy schoolmaster got along tolerably enough, and was thought, by everyone who understood nothing about the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it.

A schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance among the women of a country neighborhood. He is looked on as a sort of idle, gentlemanly person, of vastly better taste and accomplishments than the rough young farmers, and inferior in learning only to the parson. His arrival, therefore, is apt to cause a little stir at a farmhouse tea table, and to bring out an extra dish of cakes or sweets, or possibly the parade of a silver teapot. Our man of letters was accordingly a great favorite with all the country girls. How he would show himself off among them in the churchyard between services on a Sunday, gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that ran over the surrounding trees, reciting all the epitaphs on the tombstones for their amusement, or strolling with a whole flock of them along the banks of the millpond, while the more bashful country lads hung back sheepishly, envying his superior elegance and address!

From his half-wandering life he was also a kind of traveling newspaper, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his arrival was always welcomed with satisfaction. The women thought him a man of great learning besides, for he had read several books all the way through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather’s history of New England witchcraft. In that book, by the way, he believed most firmly and powerfully.

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 grown since he came to live in this bewitched region. No story was too gross or too monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself out on the rich bed of clover along the little brook that whimpered past his schoolhouse, and there pore over old Mather’s dreadful tales until the gathering dusk of evening turned the printed page into a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he made his way home by swamp and stream and awful woodland to whatever farmhouse he happened to be quartered in, every sound of nature at that bewitching hour set his excited imagination fluttering: the moan of the whippoorwill from the hillside, that night bird which calls its own name; the boding croak of the tree frog, herald of a storm; the dreary hooting of the screech owl; or the sudden rustle in the thicket of birds startled off their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most brightly in the darkest places, would startle him now and then when one of unusual brightness came streaming across his path; and if by chance some great blundering beetle came winging into him, the poor fellow was ready to give up the ghost, certain that he had been struck with a witch’s token. His only remedy at such times, either to drown his own thoughts or to drive off evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes; and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, sitting in their doorways of an evening, were often filled with awe at his nasal melody, sweet and long drawn out, floating down from the distant hill or along the dusky road.

Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to spend long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and sputtering along the hearth, and to listen to their marvelous tales of ghosts and goblins, of haunted fields and haunted brooks, haunted bridges and haunted houses, and above all of the headless horseman, or the Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He delighted them just as much with his own anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the dreadful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air that were common in the earlier days of Connecticut, and frightened them woefully with his speculations about comets and shooting stars, and with the alarming fact that the world absolutely did turn round, and that they were upside down half the time.

But if there was pleasure in all this, while he sat snug in the chimney corner of a room that glowed red from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no specter dared show its face, it was dearly paid for by the terrors of his walk home afterward. What fearful shapes and shadows lay in wait for him in the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what a wistful look he watched every trembling ray of light streaming across the empty fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some bush loaded with snow, which stood in his very path like a spirit in a sheet! 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 for fear of seeing some strange creature tramping close behind him! And how often was he thrown into complete dismay by a rushing gust howling among the trees, in the belief that it was the Galloping Hessian out on one of his nightly rides!

All these, however, were only the terrors of the night, phantoms of a mind that walks in darkness; and though he had seen many specters in his time, and had been more than once waylaid by Satan in various shapes on his lonely walks, daylight always put an end to these evils. He would have led a pleasant life of it, in spite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a creature that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts and goblins and the whole race of witches put together, and that was a woman.

Among the musical disciples who gathered one evening a week to receive his instruction in psalm singing was Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming girl of a fresh eighteen, plump as a partridge, ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father’s peaches, and famous far and wide, not only for her beauty but for her vast expectations. She was besides a little of a coquette, as could be seen even in her dress, which mixed old fashions with new, whichever best set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold that her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Holland, the tempting laced bodice of the olden time, and with it a skirt provokingly short, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.

Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart where women were concerned, and it is no wonder that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in his eyes, especially after he had visited her at her father’s house. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, open-handed farmer. He seldom sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm, it is true, but within those boundaries everything was snug and happy and in good order. He was satisfied with his wealth but not proud of it, and prided himself on the hearty abundance rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold stood on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks in which the Dutch farmers so love to nestle. A great elm spread its broad branches over it, and at the foot of the elm a spring of the softest and sweetest water bubbled up into a little well made of a barrel, and then stole sparkling away through the grass to a neighboring brook that went bubbling along among alders and dwarf willows. Close to the farmhouse stood a huge barn that might have served for a church, every window and crack of which seemed to be bursting with the treasures of the farm. The flail sounded busily inside it from morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons enjoyed the sunshine on the roof, some with one eye turned up as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings or buried in their breasts, and others swelling and cooing and bowing to their mates. Sleek, unwieldy pigs grunted in the repose and plenty of their pens, and out of them now and then sallied a troop of suckling piglets, as if to sniff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese rode on a nearby pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys went gobbling through the farmyard; and guinea fowl fretted about it like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant rooster, that model 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 he had found.

The schoolmaster’s mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind’s eye he saw every roasting pig running about with a pudding in its belly and an apple in its mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie and tucked in under a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; the ducks lay paired off cosily in their dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent sufficiency of onion sauce. In the pigs he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon and the juicy, savory ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing and perhaps a necklace of savory sausages; and even bright Chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back in a side dish, with claws in the air, as if begging for the mercy his chivalrous spirit had scorned to ask while he was alive.

As Ichabod dreamed over all this, and rolled his great green eyes across the fat meadowlands, the rich fields of wheat and rye and buckwheat and Indian corn, and the orchards bending with ruddy fruit that surrounded the warm home of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the girl who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination swelled with the thought of how readily they might be turned into cash and the money laid out in immense tracts of wild land and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Indeed, his busy fancy had already realized his hopes and set before him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, perched on top of a wagon loaded with household odds and ends, pots and kettles swinging underneath; and he saw himself astride an ambling mare with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, or Tennessee, or the Lord knows where.

When he entered the house the conquest of his heart was complete. It was one of those spacious farmhouses with a high-ridged but low-sloping roof, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers, the low projecting eaves forming a porch along the front that could be closed up in bad weather. Under this hung flails, harness, all sorts of farming tools, and nets for fishing in the river nearby. Benches were built along the sides for summer use, and a great spinning wheel at one end and a churn at the other showed the various uses to which this important porch might be put. From here the wondering Ichabod passed into the hall, which formed the center of the house and the place where the family usually lived. Here rows of resplendent pewter, ranged along a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag of wool ready to be spun; in another a quantity of homespun cloth just off the loom. Ears of Indian corn and strings of dried apples and peaches hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the bright show of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors, and the andirons, with their shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops. Mock oranges and conch shells decorated the mantelpiece, strings of birds’ eggs of every color hung above it, a great ostrich egg was suspended from the middle of the ceiling, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well-mended china.

From the moment Ichabod laid eyes on these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his one 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 old, who seldom had anything to contend with but giants, enchanters, fiery dragons and other such easily conquered adversaries, and had only to force his way through gates of iron and brass and walls of adamant to the castle keep where the lady of his heart was shut up, all of which he achieved as easily as a man carves his way to the middle 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 that were forever raising new difficulties and obstacles; and he had to face a host of fearsome adversaries of real flesh and blood, the many country admirers who besieged every door to her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye on one another, yet ready to fly out together in the common cause against any new competitor.

The most formidable of these was a burly, roaring, roistering fellow by the name of Abraham, or, by the Dutch shortening of it, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair and a bluff but not unpleasant face, in which fun and arrogance were mingled together. From his Herculean build and his great power of limb he had received the nickname of Brom Bones, and by that name everybody knew him. He was famous for his knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as clever on a horse as a Tartar. He was foremost at every race and every cockfight; and with the authority that bodily strength wins in country life, he was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side and delivering his decisions with an air and tone that allowed no argument and no appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic, but there was more mischief than ill will in him, and under all his overbearing roughness there ran a strong dash of good-humored waggery. He had three or four boon companions who took him for their model, and at the head of them he scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles around. In cold weather he was known by a fur cap topped with a flaunting fox’s tail; and when the folk at a country gathering spotted that well-known crest in the distance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing past the farmhouses at midnight with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Cossacks, and the old women, startled out of their sleep, would listen a moment until the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, “There goes Brom Bones and his gang!” The neighbors looked on him with a mixture of awe, admiration and goodwill, and whenever some madcap prank or country brawl happened in the vicinity, they always shook their heads and warranted that Brom Bones was at the bottom of it.

This roistering hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina as the object of his uncouth gallantries; and though his amorous toyings were something like the tender caresses of a bear, it was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his hopes. Certain it is that his advances were the signal for rival candidates to retire, since none of them felt any inclination to cross a lion in his love affairs; so that when his horse was seen tied to the Van Tassel fence on a Sunday night, a sure sign that his master was courting, or sparking, as they called it, inside, all other suitors passed by in despair and carried the war into other quarters.

Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod Crane had to contend; and, all things considered, a stouter man than he would have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would have despaired. But he had a happy mixture of pliability and perseverance in his nature. In form and in spirit he was like a supple young sapling, yielding but tough. Though he bent, he never broke; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, the moment it was gone he sprang up as straight as ever and carried his head as high.

To have taken the field openly against his rival would have been madness, for Brom was not a man to be thwarted in his love affairs, any more than that stormy lover Achilles. Ichabod therefore made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing master he paid frequent visits to the farmhouse. He had nothing to fear from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling block in a lover’s path. Balt Van Tassel was an easy, indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her own way in everything. His notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and manage her poultry, for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish creatures and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves. So while the busy woman bustled about the house, or plied her spinning wheel at one end of the porch, honest Balt would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the exploits of a little wooden warrior who, armed with a sword in each hand, fought the wind most valiantly on the peak of the barn. And in the meantime Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter beside the spring under the great elm, or strolling with her in the twilight, that hour so favorable to a lover’s eloquence.

I do not profess to know how a woman’s heart is wooed and won. To me such things have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some hearts seem to have only one vulnerable point, one door of access, while others have a thousand avenues and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the first, but a still greater proof of generalship to hold the second, for a man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is a hero indeed. Certain it is that this was not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones; for from the moment Ichabod Crane began his advances, Brom’s interests plainly declined. His horse was no longer seen tied at the fence on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud grew up little by little between him and the schoolmaster of Sleepy Hollow.

Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, would gladly have carried matters to open warfare and settled their claims to the lady in the fashion of those most concise and simple reasoners, the knights errant of old, by single combat. But Ichabod was far too conscious of the superior might of his adversary to enter the lists against him. He had overheard a boast of Bones, that he would “double the schoolmaster up and lay him on a shelf in his own schoolhouse,” and he was much too wary to give him the opportunity. There was something extremely provoking in this obstinately peaceful policy. It left Brom no alternative but to draw on the funds of country waggery in his disposition and play off boorish practical jokes on his rival. Ichabod became the object of whimsical persecution by Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried his hitherto peaceful domain: they smoked out his singing school by stopping up the chimney; they broke into the schoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable fastenings of withe and window stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy, until the poor schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their meetings there. But what was still more annoying, Brom took every opportunity of turning him into ridicule in the presence of his mistress, and trained a scoundrel of a dog to whine in the most ludicrous manner, which he introduced as a rival of Ichabod’s, to instruct her in psalm singing.

In this way matters went on for some time without producing any material effect on the relative position of the contending powers. On a fine autumn afternoon Ichabod sat in a pensive mood, enthroned on the lofty stool from which he usually watched over all the concerns of his little kingdom of letters. In his hand he swayed a ruler, that scepter of despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evildoers; while on the desk before him lay various contraband articles and prohibited weapons, detected upon the persons of idle boys, such as half-eaten apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly cages, and whole legions of rampant little paper gamecocks. Some appalling act of justice had evidently been carried out lately, for every scholar was busily bent over his book, or whispering slyly behind it with one eye kept on the master, and a kind of buzzing stillness reigned throughout the schoolroom. It was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a Black farmhand in jacket and trousers of coarse cloth, wearing the round-crowned remains of a hat like the cap of Mercury, and mounted on the back of a ragged, wild, half-broken colt, which he managed with a rope by way of halter. He came clattering up to the school door with an invitation for Ichabod to attend a merrymaking, a quilting frolic, to be held that evening at Mr. Van Tassel’s; and having delivered his message with all the importance and all the fine language he could muster, he dashed over the brook and went scampering away up the hollow, full of the hurry and consequence of his errand.

All was bustle and hubbub now in the lately quiet schoolroom. The scholars were hurried through their lessons without stopping at trifles; the nimble ones skipped over half of theirs with impunity, and the tardy ones got a smart application now and then in the rear to quicken their speed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside without being put away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time, bursting out like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about the green in joy at their early liberation.

The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his toilet, brushing and furbishing up his best, and indeed his only, suit of rusty black, and arranging his locks by a bit of broken looking glass that hung in the schoolhouse. So that he might appear before his lady in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse from the farmer he was lodging with, a hot-tempered old Dutchman named Hans Van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, rode out like a knight errant in quest of adventures. But it is only proper that I should, in the true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipment of my hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode was a broken-down plow horse that had outlived almost everything but his viciousness. He was gaunt and shaggy, with a ewe neck and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burrs; one eye had lost its pupil and was glaring and spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still, he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge by the name he bore, which was Gunpowder. He had in fact been a favorite mount of his master, the hot-tempered Van Ripper, who was a furious rider and had very probably infused some of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken down as he looked, there was more lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country.

Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like a grasshopper’s; he carried his whip straight up in his hand like a scepter; and as his horse jogged along, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to his horse’s tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they shambled out of Hans Van Ripper’s gate, and altogether it was such an apparition as one seldom meets in broad daylight.

It was, as I have said, a fine autumn day. The sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some of the more tender trees had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to appear high in the air; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory; and the pensive whistle of the quail came at intervals from a neighboring stubble field.

The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry they fluttered, chirping and frolicking, from bush to bush and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest robin, the favorite game of boy sportsmen, with its loud, querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker, with his crimson crest, his broad black collar and his splendid plumage; and the cedar waxwing, with its red-tipped wings and yellow-tipped tail and its little cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy dandy in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, bobbing and nodding and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove.

As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to any symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld a vast store of apples, some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees, some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market, others heaped up in rich piles for the cider press. Farther on he saw great fields of Indian corn, its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty pudding, and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun and giving ample prospect of the most luxurious of pies. And then he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields, breathing the odor of the beehive; and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty pancakes, well buttered and garnished with honey or treacle by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel.

Feeding his mind in this way with many sweet thoughts and sugared suppositions, he journeyed along the side of a range of hills that look out over some of the goodliest scenery of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down into the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, except where a gentle swell here and there waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, with not a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the middle sky. A slanting ray lingered on the wooded crests of the cliffs that overhang some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop loitered in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging useless against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel hung suspended in the air.

It was toward evening when Ichabod arrived at the castle of Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the surrounding country: old farmers, a spare, leathery-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes and magnificent pewter buckles; their brisk, withered little wives, in close crimped caps, long-waisted short gowns and homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside; buxom girls, almost as antiquated as their mothers, except where a straw hat, a fine ribbon or perhaps a white frock gave some symptom of city innovation; and the sons, in short square-skirted coats with rows of stupendous brass buttons, their hair generally tied in a queue in the fashion of the times, especially if they had been able to get hold of an eelskin for the purpose, that being esteemed throughout the country a powerful nourisher and strengthener of the hair.

Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the scene, having come to the gathering on his favorite steed Daredevil, a creature like himself, full of mettle and mischief, and one that nobody but himself could manage. He was in fact noted for preferring vicious animals, given to all kinds of tricks, which kept the rider in constant risk of his neck; for he held a tractable, well-broken horse to be unworthy of a lad of spirit.

Gladly would I pause to dwell on the world of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of my hero as he entered the state parlor of the Van Tassel house. Not the charms of the bevy of buxom girls with their luxurious display of red and white, but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea table in the sumptuous season of autumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tenderer and oilier fried cake, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and shortcakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies and peach pies and pumpkin pies, besides slices of ham and smoked beef, and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums and peaches and pears and quinces, not to mention broiled shad and roast chickens, together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst of it. Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and I am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was in no such hurry as his historian, and did ample justice to every dainty.

He was a kind and thankful creature, whose heart dilated in proportion as his skin was filled with good cheer, and whose spirits rose with eating as other men’s rise with drink. He could not help, either, rolling his large eyes about him as he ate, and chuckling at the possibility that he might one day be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he would turn his back on the old schoolhouse, snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper and every other stingy patron, and kick out of doors any wandering schoolmaster who dared to call him comrade.

Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his guests with a face dilated with content and good humor, round and jolly as the harvest moon. His hospitable attentions were brief but expressive, being confined to a shake of the hand, a slap on the shoulder, a loud laugh, and a pressing invitation to “fall to and help yourselves.”

And now the sound of the music from the hall summoned them to the dance. The musician was an old gray-headed Black fiddler who had been the traveling orchestra of the neighborhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped away on two or three strings, accompanying every movement of the bow with a motion of his head, bowing almost to the ground and stamping with his foot whenever a fresh couple was to start.

Ichabod prided himself on his dancing as much as on his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fiber about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, clattering about the room, you would have thought Saint Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the servants of the household and their families, who had gathered from the farm and the neighborhood in every age and size, and who stood in a pyramid of faces at every door and window, gazing with delight at the scene and grinning from ear to ear. How could the flogger of small boys be anything but animated and joyous? The lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiled graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings, while Brom Bones, sorely stricken with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner.

When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was drawn to a knot of the sager folk who sat smoking with old Van Tassel at one end of the porch, gossiping over former times and drawing out long stories about the war.

This neighborhood, at the time I am speaking of, was one of those highly favored places that abound in chronicle and in great men. The British and American lines had run near it during the war; it had therefore been the scene of marauding, and infested with refugees, cattle thieves and every other kind of border chivalry. Just enough time had passed for each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of every exploit.

There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had all but taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge. And there was an old gentleman who shall be nameless, being too rich a man to be lightly mentioned, who, at the battle of White Plains, being an excellent master of defense, parried a musket ball with a small sword, so that he absolutely felt it whiz round the blade and glance off at the hilt; in proof of which he was ready at any time to show the sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several more who had been equally great in the field, and not one of them but was persuaded that he had had a considerable hand in bringing the war to a happy termination.

But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions that followed. The neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these sheltered, long-settled retreats, but are trampled underfoot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves before their surviving friends have traveled away from the neighborhood, so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds they have no acquaintances left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities.

The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in those parts was doubtless the nearness of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed out an atmosphere of dreams and fancies that infected all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel’s that night, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told of funeral processions, and of mourning cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major André was taken, which stood in the neighborhood. Some mention was made too of the woman in white who haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard shrieking on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned on the favorite specter of Sleepy Hollow, the headless horseman, who had been heard several times of late patrolling the country, and who, it was said, tethered his horse every night among the graves in the churchyard.

The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll surrounded by locust trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of water bordered by high trees, between which you may catch glimpses of the blue hills of the Hudson. To look at its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, you would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church stretches a wide wooded dell, along which a large brook rages among broken rocks and the trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, a wooden bridge was thrown in former days; the road that led to it and the bridge itself were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about the place even in the daytime, but made a fearful darkness there at night. This was one of the favorite haunts of the headless horseman, and the place where he was most often encountered. The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollow and was obliged to get up behind him; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge, when the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the treetops with a clap of thunder.

This story was immediately matched by a thrice marvelous adventure of Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that one night, returning from the neighboring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that he had offered to race him for a bowl of punch, and would have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow; but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted and vanished in a flash of fire.

All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone in which men talk in the dark, the faces of the listeners catching only a chance gleam now and then from the glow of a pipe, sank deep into Ichabod’s mind. He repaid them in kind with large extracts from his invaluable author, Cotton Mather, and added many marvelous events that had taken place in his native state of Connecticut, and fearful sights he had seen himself on his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow.

The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered their families into their wagons, and for some time they were heard rattling along the hollow roads and over the distant hills. Some of the girls mounted on pillions behind their favorite sweethearts, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter until it gradually died away, and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted. Ichabod alone lingered behind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have a few words alone with the heiress, fully convinced that he was now on the high road to success. What passed at that interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know. Something, I am afraid, must have gone wrong, for he certainly came out again, after no very long interval, with an air quite desolate and crestfallen. Oh, these women, these women! Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor schoolmaster all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven only knows, not I. Let it be enough to say that Ichabod stole away with the air of a man who had been robbing a henhouse rather than winning a fair lady’s heart. Without looking to right or left at the scene of rural wealth on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks roused his steed most discourteously out of the comfortable quarters in which he lay soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn and oats and whole valleys of timothy and clover.

It was the very witching hour of night when Ichabod, heavy-hearted and downcast, pursued his way home along the sides of the lofty hills that rise above Tarry Town, and that he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as he was. Far below him the Tappan Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of water, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop riding quietly at anchor under the shore. In the dead hush of midnight he could even hear the barking of a watchdog from the opposite bank of the Hudson, but it was so vague and faint that it only gave him an idea of the distance between him and this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a rooster, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off from some farmhouse away among the hills, but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. There were no signs of life near him except the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog from a neighboring marsh, as if he were sleeping uncomfortably and had turned over suddenly in his bed.

All the stories of ghosts and goblins he had heard that afternoon now came crowding back on his recollection. The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper into the sky, and driving clouds hid them from his sight now and then. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes of those ghost stories had been laid. In the center of the road stood an enormous tulip tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to make trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragic story of the unfortunate André, who had been taken prisoner close by, and it was universally known by the name of Major André’s tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, and partly because of the tales of strange sights and doleful lamentations told concerning it.

As Ichabod approached this fearful tree he began to whistle. He thought his whistle was answered; it was only a blast sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he came a little nearer he thought he saw something white hanging in the middle of the tree. He paused and stopped whistling; but on looking more narrowly he saw that it was a place where the tree had been scarred by lightning and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan. His teeth chattered and his knees knocked against the saddle; it was only the rubbing of one huge bough against another as the breeze swayed them about. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him.

About two hundred yards beyond the tree a small brook crossed the road and ran into a marshy and thickly wooded glen known by the name of Wiley’s Swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a bridge over this stream. On the side of the road where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grapevines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial of all. It was at this identical spot that the unfortunate André was captured, and under the covert of those chestnuts and vines the sturdy countrymen were concealed who surprised him. Ever since, the stream has been considered a haunted one, and fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone after dark.

As he approached the stream his heart began to thump. He summoned up all his resolution, however, gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a sideways movement and ran broadside into the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins to the other side and kicked lustily with the opposite foot; it was all in vain. His steed started, it is true, but only to plunge to the other side of the road into a thicket of brambles and alder bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel on the starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffing and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge with a suddenness that nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at that moment a splashing tread beside the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove on the margin of the brook he beheld something huge, misshapen, black and towering. It did not stir, but seemed gathered up in the gloom like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveler.

The hair of the frightened schoolmaster rose upon his head with terror. What was to be done? To turn and fly was too late now; and besides, what chance was there of escaping a ghost or a goblin, if such it was, that could ride upon the wings of the wind? Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents, “Who are you?” He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgeled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder and, shutting his eyes, broke out with involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road. Dark and dismal as the night was, the form of the unknown might now in some degree be made out. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions, mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of either molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and his waywardness.

Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and who bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his own horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind; the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him. He tried to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and he could not utter a note. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. As they mounted a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow traveler into relief against the sky, gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck to perceive that he was headless; and his horror was still greater when he saw that the head, which should have rested on the shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of the saddle. His terror rose to desperation. He rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip, but the specter started off at a full jump with him. Away they dashed, then, through thick and thin, stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in the air as he stretched his long lank body out over his horse’s head in the eagerness of his flight.

They had now reached the road that turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed by a demon, instead of keeping to it, made the opposite turn and plunged headlong downhill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story, and just beyond it swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.

So far the panic of the steed had given his unskillful rider an apparent advantage in the chase; but just as he had got halfway through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way and he felt it slipping out from under him. He seized it by the pommel and tried to hold it firm, but in vain, and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck before the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled underfoot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper’s wrath passed across his mind, for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty fears. The goblin was hard on his haunches, and, unskilled rider that he was, he had all he could do to keep his seat, slipping now to one side, now to the other, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse’s backbone with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him in two.

An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hope that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church glimmering dimly under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones’s ghostly competitor had disappeared. “If I can but reach that bridge,” thought Ichabod, “I am safe.” Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind him to see whether his pursuer would vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod tried to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his skull with a tremendous crash; he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed and the goblin rider passed him by like a whirlwind.

The next morning the old horse was found, without his saddle and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master’s gate. Ichabod did not appear at breakfast. Dinner hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse and strolled idly about the banks of the brook, but there was no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod and of his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church the saddle was found trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses’ hoofs, deeply dented in the road and evidently made at furious speed, were traced as far as the bridge; and beyond it, on the bank of a broad part of the brook where the water ran deep and black, they found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a smashed pumpkin.

The brook was searched, but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be discovered. Hans Van Ripper, as executor of his estate, examined the bundle that held all his worldly effects. They consisted of two shirts and a half, two neckcloths, a pair or two of worsted stockings, an old pair of corduroy breeches, a rusty razor, a book of psalm tunes full of dog-ears, and a broken pitch pipe. As for the books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, all except Cotton Mather’s history of witchcraft, a New England almanac, and a book of dreams and fortune-telling. In this last there was a sheet of foolscap, much scribbled and blotted with several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper, who from that time forward determined to send his children to school no more, observing that he never knew any good to come of all this reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quarter’s pay only a day or two before, he must have had about him at the time of his disappearance.

The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips gathered in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and the pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of others were called to mind; and when they had diligently considered them all and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook their heads and came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor and in nobody’s debt, nobody troubled his head about him any more. The school was moved to a different quarter of the hollow, and another schoolmaster reigned in his stead.

It is true that an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit several years afterward, and from whom this account of the ghostly adventure was received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still alive; that he had left the neighborhood, partly through fear of the goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been so suddenly dismissed by the heiress; that he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country, had kept school and studied law at the same time, had been admitted to the bar, had turned politician, electioneered, written for the newspapers, and finally had been made a justice of the Ten Pound Court. Brom Bones too, who shortly after his rival’s disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina in triumph to the altar, was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin, which led some people to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.

The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means, and it is a favorite story often told about the neighborhood round the winter fire. The bridge became more than ever an object of superstitious awe, and that may be the reason the road has been altered in later years, so as to approach the church along the border of the millpond. The schoolhouse, left deserted, soon fell into decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate schoolmaster; and the plowboy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied he heard his voice in the distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.

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- Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/the-legend-of-sleepy-hollow-original
- Source: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving (Project Gutenberg #2048) (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2048)
- Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving (Project Gutenberg #2048) — original: author died 1859 (+70 passed)
- License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)