The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a short story by Washington Irving contained in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., written while he was living in Birmingham, England, and first published in 1820. With Irving's companion piece "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is among the earliest American fiction still read widely today.

1 Plot summary
2 Inspiration
3 Film adaptions
4 See also
5 Further reading
6 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a priggish schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of eighteen-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, daughter of a wealthy farmer. As Crane leaves a party at the Van Tassel home on an autumn night, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who lost his head during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head." Crane disappears from town, leaving Katrina with Brom Bones, who is implied to be the Headless Horseman.

[edit] Inspiration

The denouement of the fictional tale is set at the bridge in the real location of the Old Dutch Burying Ground in Sleepy Hollow. The characters of Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel may have been based on local residents known to the author. The character of Katrina is thought to have been based upon Eleanor Van Tassel Brush and her name comes from Eleanor's aunt Catriena Ecker Van Tessel.

Although the story was set in Tarrytown (possibly because he was writing for a New York City audience), the principle characters were based on Kinderhook folk. Letters subsequently written by Washington Irving attest to the fact that Ichabod Crane was patterned after Jesse Merwin who taught at the local schoolhouse.

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" follows a tradition of folk tales and poems involving a supernatural wild chase, including Robert Burns's Tam O' Shanter (1790), and Bürger's Der wilde Jäger, translated as The Wild Horseman (1796).

[edit] Film adaptions

Notable film adaptations include:

The Headless Horseman (1922), a silent version directed by Edward Venturini, and starring Will Rogers as Ichabod Crane. It was filmed on location in New York's Hudson River Valley.
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), directed by James Algar, Clyde Geronimi and Jack Kinney, produced by Walt Disney Productions. It is an animated cartoon version of the story, paired with a similar treatment of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. The climactic ride is more extended than the original story, and whether the visually impressive Horseman is an actual ghost or a human in disguise is left unclear. Later the Sleepy Hollow portion of the film was separated from the companion film, and thus screened, aired, marketed, and sold separately as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow beginning in 1958.
Sleepy Hollow (1999), directed by Tim Burton. A movie adaptation which takes many liberties with the plot and characters.
In the Nickelodeon television series Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1992), the episode The Tale of the Midnight Ride serves as a sequel to the classic story. In this episode a boy moves to Sleepy Hollow where he develops a crush on a girl. One night after the Halloween dance, they see the ghost of Ichabod Crane and they send him over the bridge that the Headless Horseman cannot cross. However, the Headless Horseman then comes after them.

[edit] See also

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was founded in 1849, and is adjacent to the Old Dutch Burying Ground. They are separately owned and administered.

[edit] Further reading

Thomas S. Wermuth (2001). Rip Van Winkle's Neighbors: The Transformation of Rural Society in the Hudson River Valley. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-5084-8.