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Title: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Author: Washington Irving

Release date: June 27, 2008 [eBook #41]
Most recently updated: February 10, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41

Credits: Ilana M. (Kingsley) Newby and Greg Newby

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LEGEND
OF SLEEPY HOLLOW ***

The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow

by Washington Irving

FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS
OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer sky.
CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern
shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by
the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always
prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when
they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is
called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the
name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by
the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity
of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that
as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of
being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two
miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is
one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through
it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle
of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever
breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.
I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was
in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had
wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was
startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around
and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should
wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions,

and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more
promising than this little valley.
From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its
inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this
sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW,
and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the
neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the
land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was
bewitched by a High German doctor, during the early days of the
settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his
tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master
Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of
some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people,
causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of
marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see
strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole
neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight
superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in
any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold,
seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.
The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and
seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the
apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be
the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a
cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and
who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom
of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the
valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the
vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most
authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and
collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of
the trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to
the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed
with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is
owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard
before daybreak.

Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has
furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and the
spectre is known at all the country firesides, by the name of the Headless
Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.
It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not
confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously
imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. However wide awake
they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in
a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow
imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions.
I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud, for it is in such little
retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great State of
New York, that population, manners, and customs remain fixed, while the
great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant
changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved.
They are like those little nooks of still water, which border a rapid stream,
where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly
revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing
current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of
Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees
and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.
In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American
history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of
Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, “tarried,” in Sleepy
Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a
native of Connecticut, a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for
the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of
frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was
not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with
narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his
sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most
loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears,
large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a
weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind
blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his
clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for

the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped
from a cornfield.
His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, rudely
constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and partly patched with
leaves of old copybooks. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours,
by a withe twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the
window shutters; so that though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he
would find some embarrassment in getting out,—an idea most probably
borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot.
The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the
foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a formidable birch-
tree growing at one end of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils’
voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy summer’s
day, like the hum of a beehive; interrupted now and then by the
authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command, or,
peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy
loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a
conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, “Spare the rod
and spoil the child.” Ichabod Crane’s scholars certainly were not spoiled.
I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel
potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their subjects; on the
contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity;
taking the burden off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the
strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod,
was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were satisfied by
inflicting a double portion on some little tough wrong-headed, broad-skirted
Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath
the birch. All this he called “doing his duty by their parents;” and he never
inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so
consolatory to the smarting urchin, that “he would remember it and thank
him for it the longest day he had to live.”
When school hours were over, he was even the companion and playmate
of the larger boys; and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of the
smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters, or good
housewives for mothers, noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed, it
behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising

from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to
furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank,
had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he
was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the
houses of the farmers whose children he instructed. With these he lived
successively a week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighborhood,
with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.
That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons,
who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden, and
schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself
both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the
lighter labors of their farms, helped to make hay, mended the fences, took
the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood for the
winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway
with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became
wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the
mothers by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and like the lion
bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with
a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours
together.
In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master of the
neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young
folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays, to
take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers;
where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the
parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the
congregation; and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church,
and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of
the millpond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately
descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little
makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated “by
hook and by crook,” the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and
was thought, by all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork, to
have a wonderfully easy life of it.
The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female
circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a kind of idle,

gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to
the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the
parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the
tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes
or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man of
letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country
damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between
services on Sundays; gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that
overran the surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs
on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the
banks of the adjacent millpond; while the more bashful country bumpkins
hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.
From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of travelling gazette,
carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his
appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover,
esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several
books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather’s “History
of New England Witchcraft,” in which, by the way, he most firmly and
potently believed.
He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity.
His appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally
extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spell-
bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious
swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the
afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little
brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather’s
direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a
mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and
stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be
quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited
imagination,—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding
cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the
screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from
their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest
places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would
stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came
winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give

up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch’s token. His only
resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil
spirits, was to sing psalm tunes and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as
they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing
his nasal melody, “in linked sweetness long drawn out,” floating from the
distant hill, or along the dusky road.
Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter
evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a
row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their
marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted
brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the
headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes
called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft,
and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which
prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them
woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the
alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were
half the time topsy-turvy!
But if there was a pleasure in all this, while snugly cuddling in the
chimney corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the
crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show its face,
it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homewards.
What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly
glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling
ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window!
How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a
sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling
awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and
dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being
tramping close behind him! And how often was he thrown into complete
dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it
was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings!
All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind
that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time,
and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely
perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would

have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if
his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to
mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together,
and that was—a woman.
Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each week,
to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel, the
daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming
lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and rosy-
cheeked as one of her father’s peaches, and universally famed, not merely
for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a
coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of
ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore
the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had
brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and
withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle
in the country round.
Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards the sex; and it is not
to be wondered at that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in his eyes,
more especially after he had visited her in her paternal mansion. Old Baltus
Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted
farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the
boundaries of his own farm; but within those everything was snug, happy
and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it;
and piqued himself upon the hearty abundance, rather than the style in
which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in
one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks in which the Dutch farmers are
so fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad branches over it, at the
foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a
little well formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling away through the
grass, to a neighboring brook, that babbled along among alders and dwarf
willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for
a church; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with
the treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from
morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the
eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the
weather, some with their heads under their wings or buried in their bosoms,
and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were

enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting in
the repose and abundance of their pens, from whence sallied forth, now and
then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of
snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of
ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and
Guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their
peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock,
that pattern of a husband, a warrior and a fine gentleman, clapping his
burnished wings and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart,—
sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously calling his
ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he
had discovered.
The pedagogue’s mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous
promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind’s eye, he pictured
to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly, and
an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable
pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in
their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married
couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw
carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a
turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing,
and, peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages; and even bright
chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted
claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask
while living.
As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great
green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of
buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy fruit,
which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after
the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded
with the idea, how they might be readily turned into cash, and the money
invested in immense tracts of wild land, and shingle palaces in the
wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to
him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the
top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles
dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a

colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, 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 high-ridged but lowly sloping
roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers; the low
projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front, capable of being closed
up in bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various utensils of
husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring river. 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 devoted. From this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered the hall,
which formed the centre of the mansion, and the place of usual residence.
Here rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes.
In one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be spun; in another, a
quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and
strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls,
mingled with the gaud 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; andirons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs,
glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock-oranges and conch-
shells decorated the mantelpiece; strings of various-colored birds eggs were
suspended above it; a great ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the
room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense
treasures of old silver and well-mended china.
From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight, the
peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was how to gain the
affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise,
however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a
knight-errant of yore, who seldom had anything but giants, enchanters, fiery
dragons, and such like easily conquered adversaries, to contend with and
had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass, and walls of
adamant to the castle keep, where the lady of his heart was confined; all
which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the centre of a
Christmas pie; and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course.
Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country
coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever
presenting new difficulties and impediments; and he had to encounter a host

of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers,
who beset every portal to her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye upon
each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause against any new
competitor.
Among these, the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade,
of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, 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 countenance, having a
mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great
powers of limb he had received the nickname of BROM BONES, by which
he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in
horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was
foremost at all races and cock fights; and, with the ascendancy which bodily
strength always acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting
his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone that
admitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or
a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all
his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor
at bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who regarded him as
their model, and at the head of whom he scoured the country, attending
every scene of feud or merriment for miles round. In cold weather he was
distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted with a flaunting fox’s tail; and when
the folks at a country gathering descried this well-known crest at a distance,
whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a
squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along past the
farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Don
Cossacks; and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for a
moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, “Ay, there
goes Brom Bones and his gang!” The neighbors looked upon him with a
mixture of awe, admiration, and good-will; and, when any madcap prank or
rustic brawl occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads, and
warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it.
This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina
for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though his amorous toyings
were something like the gentle caresses and endearments of a bear, yet it
was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his hopes. Certain it

is, his advances were signals for rival candidates to retire, who felt no
inclination to cross a lion in his amours; insomuch, that when his horse was
seen tied to Van Tassel’s paling, on a Sunday night, a sure sign that his
master was courting, or, as it is termed, “sparking,” within, 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, considering all things, a stouter man than he would have shrunk from
the competition, and a wiser man would have despaired. He had, however, a
happy mixture of pliability and perseverance in his nature; he was in form
and spirit like a supple-jack—yielding, but tough; though he bent, he never
broke; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the moment
it was away—jerk!—he was as erect, and carried his head as high as ever.
To have taken the field openly against his rival would have been
madness; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his amours, 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 made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything
to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so
often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. 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 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 things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of
themselves. Thus, while the busy dame bustled about the house, or plied her
spinning-wheel at one end of the piazza, honest Balt would sit smoking his
evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements of a little wooden
warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting
the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the mean time, Ichabod would carry
on his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring under the great elm,
or sauntering along in the twilight, that hour so favorable to the lover’s
eloquence.
I profess not to know how women’s hearts are wooed and won. To me
they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have
but one vulnerable point, or 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 former, but a still greater proof of generalship to
maintain possession of the latter, for 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 indeed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case
with the redoubtable Brom Bones; and from the moment Ichabod Crane
made his advances, the interests of the former evidently declined: his horse
was no longer seen tied to the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud
gradually arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow.
Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, would fain have
carried matters to open warfare and have settled their pretensions to the
lady, according to the mode of those most concise and simple reasoners, the
knights-errant of yore,—by single combat; but Ichabod was 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 of his own schoolhouse;” and he was too wary to give
him an opportunity. There was something extremely provoking in this
obstinately pacific system; it left Brom no alternative but to draw upon the
funds of rustic waggery in his disposition, and to play off boorish practical
jokes upon his rival. Ichabod became the object of whimsical persecution to
Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried his hitherto peaceful
domains; smoked out his singing school by stopping up the chimney; broke
into the schoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable fastenings of withe
and window stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy, so that the poor
schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their
meetings there. But what was still more annoying, Brom took all
opportunities of turning him into ridicule in presence of his mistress, and
had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to whine in the most ludicrous
manner, and introduced as a rival of Ichabod’s, to instruct her in psalmody.
In this way matters went on for some time, without producing any
material effect on the relative situations of the contending powers. On a fine
autumnal afternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty
stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of his little literary
realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the
birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to
evil doers, while on the desk before him might be seen sundry contraband
articles and prohibited weapons, detected upon the persons of idle urchins,

such as half-munched apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and whole
legions of rampant little paper gamecocks. Apparently there had been some
appalling act of justice recently inflicted, for his scholars were all busily
intent upon their books, or slyly whispering behind them with one eye kept
upon the master; and a kind of buzzing stillness reigned throughout the
schoolroom. It was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a negro in
tow-cloth jacket and trowsers, a round-crowned fragment 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 to Ichabod to attend a merry-making or
“quilting frolic,” to be held that evening at Mynheer Van Tassel’s; and
having delivered his message with that air of importance, and effort at fine
language, which a negro is apt to display on petty embassies of the kind, he
dashed over the brook, and was seen scampering away up the hollow, full of
the importance and hurry of his mission.
All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet schoolroom. The
scholars were hurried through their lessons without stopping at trifles; those
who were nimble skipped over half with impunity, and those who were
tardy had 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 forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about the
green in joy at their early emancipation.
The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his toilet,
brushing and furbishing up his best, and indeed only suit of rusty black, and
arranging his locks by a bit of broken looking-glass that hung up in the
schoolhouse. That he might make his appearance before his mistress in the
true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse from the farmer with whom he
was domiciliated, a choleric old Dutchman of the name of Hans Van Ripper,
and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth like a knight-errant in quest of
adventures. But it is meet I should, in the true spirit of romantic story, give
some account of the looks and equipments of my hero and his steed. The
animal he bestrode was a broken-down plow-horse, that had outlived almost
everything but its viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck,
and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted
with burs; 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 from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He
had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master’s, the choleric Van Ripper,
who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own
spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there was
more of the 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 grasshoppers’; he carried his whip
perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged on, 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 the
horses tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they
shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an
apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight.
It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal 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 trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into
brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks
began to make their appearance high in the air; the bark of the squirrel
might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive
whistle of the quail at intervals from the 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 cock robin, the favorite game of stripling 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 gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar bird, with its red-
tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the
blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white
underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing 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 every
symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of
jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld 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
beheld great fields of Indian corn, with 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 prospects of the most luxurious of pies; and
anon 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 slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, by the
delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel.
Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and “sugared
suppositions,” he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which look
out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun
gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west. The wide bosom of the
Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a
gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant
mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without 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 mid-heaven. A
slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung
some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of
their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly
down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the
reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel
was suspended in the air.
It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van
Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent
country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and
breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles.
Their brisk, withered little dames, in close-crimped caps, long-waisted short
gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions, and gay calico
pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their
mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white
frock, gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short square-skirted

coats, with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally
queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eel-
skin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the country as a potent
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 which no one 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 as unworthy of a lad of spirit.
Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon the
enraptured gaze of my hero, as he entered the state parlor of Van Tassel’s
mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious
display of red and white; but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country
tea-table, in the sumptuous time 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 tender oly koek,
and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, 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 roasted
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—Heaven bless the mark! I
want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too
eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so great a
hurry as his historian, but 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
some men’s do with drink. He could not help, too, rolling his large eyes
round him as he ate, and chuckling with 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’d turn his back upon the old schoolhouse;
snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other niggardly

patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare 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 themselves.”
And now the sound of the music from the common room, or hall,
summoned to the dance. The musician was an old gray-headed negro, who
had been the itinerant 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 on two or three strings, accompanying every
movement of the bow with a motion of the head; bowing almost to the
ground, and stamping with his foot whenever a fresh couple were to start.
Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal
powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his
loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would
have thought St. Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was
figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes;
who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the
neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door
and window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eyeballs,
and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear. How could the flogger
of urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous? The lady of his heart
was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his
amorous oglings; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy,
sat brooding by himself in one corner.
When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the
sager folks, who, with Old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza,
gossiping over former times, and drawing out long stories about the war.
This neighborhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of those
highly favored places which abound with chronicle and great men. The
British and American line had run near it during the war; it had, therefore,
been the scene of marauding and infested with refugees, cowboys, and all
kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable 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 nearly 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 mynheer to
be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of White Plains, being an excellent
master of defence, parried a musket-ball with a small sword, insomuch 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 that had been equally great in the field, not
one of whom but was persuaded that he 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
succeeded. 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 under foot 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 travelled away from the neighborhood; so that
when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance
left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of
ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities.
The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories
in these parts, was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There
was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it
breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land.
Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel’s, and, as
usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales
were told about funeral trains, and mourning cries and wailings heard and
seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major André was taken, and
which stood in the neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the
woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often
heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the
snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite

spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman, who had been heard
several times of late, patrolling the country; and, it was said, tethered his
horse nightly 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, peeps may be caught at the blue
hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams
seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might
rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along
which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees.
Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly
thrown a wooden bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were
thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in
the daytime; but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. Such was one of the
favorite haunts of the Headless Horseman, and the place where he was most
frequently 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 tree-tops with a clap of
thunder.
This story was immediately matched by a thrice marvellous adventure of
Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey.
He affirmed that on returning one night from the neighboring village of
Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that he had
offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should 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 with which men talk in the
dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and then receiving a casual
gleam from the glare of a pipe, sank deep in the mind of Ichabod. He repaid
them in kind with large extracts from his invaluable author, Cotton Mather,

and added many marvellous events that had taken place in his native State
of Connecticut, and fearful sights which he had seen in his nightly walks
about Sleepy Hollow.
The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together
their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling along
the hollow roads, and over the distant hills. Some of the damsels mounted
on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their light-hearted laughter,
mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands,
sounding fainter and fainter, until they gradually died away,—and the late
scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered
behind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have a tête-à-tête with
the heiress; fully convinced that he was now on the high road to success.
What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not
know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong, for he
certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate
and chapfallen. Oh, these women! these women! Could that girl have been
playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor
pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven only
knows, not I! Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one
who had been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady’s heart. Without
looking to the right or left to notice 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 uncourteously from the comfortable
quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn
and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover.
It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted and
crestfallen, pursued his travels homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills
which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the
afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him the Tappan
Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the
tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush
of midnight, he could even hear the barking of the watchdog from the
opposite shore of the Hudson; but it was so vague and faint as only to give
an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then,
too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound
far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills—but it was like a
dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but

occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural
twang of a bullfrog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably
and turning suddenly in his bed.
All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon
now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and
darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds
occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and
dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the
scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre 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 form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down
almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the
tragical story of the unfortunate André, who had been taken prisoner hard
by; and 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
from 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 but a blast sweeping sharply through the
dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought he saw something
white, hanging in the midst of the tree: he paused and ceased whistling but,
on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a place where the tree had
been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard
a groan—his teeth chattered, and his knees smote against the saddle: it was
but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another, as they were swayed about
by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him.
About two hundred yards from 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 that side of the road where the brook entered the wood,
a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines, threw a
cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial. It was at
this identical spot that the unfortunate André was captured, and under the
covert of those chestnuts and vines were the sturdy yeomen concealed who

surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, 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, however, all his resolution, 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 lateral movement, and ran
broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay,
jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot:
it was all in vain; his steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to the
opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles and alder bushes. The
schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of
old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling and snorting, but came to a
stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider
sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of
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
and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some
gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveller.
The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror. What
was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late; and besides, what chance
was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was, which 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 cudgelled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and,
shutting his eyes, broke forth 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. Though the night was
dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be
ascertained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions, and
mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of
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 waywardness.
Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and
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 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 endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but
his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a
stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this
pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon
fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the
figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and
muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was
headless!—but his horror was still more increased on observing that the
head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on
the pommel of his 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 spectre started full jump with him. Away,
then, they dashed 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 away over his horse’s head, in the eagerness of
his flight.
They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but
Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it,
made an 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 swells
the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.
As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskilful rider an apparent
advantage in the chase, but just as he had got half way through the hollow,
the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it slipping from under him. He
seized it by the pommel, and endeavored to hold it firm, but in vain; and
had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck,
when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled under foot 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 (unskilful rider that he
was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on one
side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his

horse’s backbone, with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him
asunder.
An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church
bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of
the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church
dimly glaring 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 that 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 to see if his pursuer
should 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 endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late.
It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash,—he was tumbled
headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin
rider, passed 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 make his appearance at breakfast; dinner-hour came, but no
Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the
banks of the brook; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now began to
feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod, and 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 was found the saddle
trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses’ hoofs deeply dented in the road,
and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on
the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black,
was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered
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
which contained all his worldly effects. They consisted of two shirts and a
half; two stocks for the neck; a pair or two of worsted stockings; an old pair
of corduroy small-clothes; a rusty razor; a book of psalm tunes full of

dog’s-ears; and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the books and furniture of the
schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, excepting Cotton Mather’s
“History of Witchcraft,” a “New England Almanac,” and a book of dreams
and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled
and blotted in 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 no more to school, observing that
he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever
money the schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quarter’s pay
but a day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of
his disappearance.
The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the
following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in the
churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and 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 any more about him; the school was removed to a
different quarter of the hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.
It is true, an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit
several years after, 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 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; 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 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 evening fire. The bridge became more than ever an object of
superstitious awe; and that may be the reason why the road has been altered
of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the millpond.
The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be
haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue and the plowboy,
loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at
a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes
of Sleepy Hollow.

POSTSCRIPT.
FOUND IN THE HANDWRITING OF MR. KNICKERBOCKER.
The preceding tale is given almost in the precise words in which I heard
it related at a Corporation meeting at the ancient city of Manhattoes, at
which were present many of its sagest and most illustrious burghers. The
narrator was a pleasant, shabby, gentlemanly old fellow, in pepper-and-salt
clothes, with a sadly humourous face, and one whom I strongly suspected
of being poor—he made such efforts to be entertaining. When his story was
concluded, there was much laughter and approbation, particularly from two
or three deputy aldermen, who had been asleep the greater part of the time.
There was, however, one tall, dry-looking old gentleman, with beetling
eyebrows, who maintained a grave and rather severe face throughout, now
and then folding his arms, inclining his head, and looking down upon the
floor, as if turning a doubt over in his mind. He was one of your wary men,
who never laugh but upon good grounds—when they have reason and law
on their side. When the mirth of the rest of the company had subsided, and
silence was restored, he leaned one arm on the elbow of his chair, and
sticking the other akimbo, demanded, with a slight, but exceedingly sage
motion of the head, and contraction of the brow, what was the moral of the
story, and what it went to prove?
The story-teller, who was just putting a glass of wine to his lips, as a
refreshment after his toils, paused for a moment, looked at his inquirer with

an air of infinite deference, and, lowering the glass slowly to the table,
observed that the story was intended most logically to prove—
“That there is no situation in life but has its advantages and pleasures—
provided we will but take a joke as we find it:
“That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers is likely to have
rough riding of it.
“Ergo, for a country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch
heiress is a certain step to high preferment in the state.”
The cautious old gentleman knit his brows tenfold closer after this
explanation, being sorely puzzled by the ratiocination of the syllogism,
while, methought, the one in pepper-and-salt eyed him with something of a
triumphant leer. At length he observed that all this was very well, but still
he thought the story a little on the extravagant—there were one or two
points on which he had his doubts.
“Faith, sir,” replied the story-teller, “as to that matter, I don’t believe one-
half of it myself.” D. K.

THE END.

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