The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving — Part 1

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow follows Ichabod Crane, a superstitious schoolteacher, who competes for Katrina Van Tassel’s love. One eerie night, he encounters the legendary Headless Horseman, leading to his mysterious disappearance, leaving Sleepy Hollow haunted forever. Summary by Dream AudioBooks

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, written by
Washington Irving, presented by Dream Audio Books found among the
papers of the late Dietrich 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

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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 topon z And, where they always prudently shortened

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sail and implore the protection of Saint Nicholas when they crossed.
There lies a small market town or rural port, which
by some is called Greensburg, but which is more generally
and properly known by the name of Tarrytown. This name
was given, we are told, in former days, by the

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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 two miles, there is a little valley,

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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 tranquility. I

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recollect that when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel shoot,
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

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by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for
a retreat, whether 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

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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 dream influence seems to hang over

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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 pow wows there before the country was discovered
by Master Hendrik Hudson. Certain it is the place still

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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 marvelous beliefs, are subject to trances
and visions, and frequently see strained sights and hear music

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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 hole ninefold,
seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.

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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

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battle during the Revolutionary War, and who was ever a
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 extended
times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity
of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of

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the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been
careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this specter,
allege that the body of the trooper, having been buried
in the churchyard, the ghost dries forth to the scene
of battle in knightly quest of his head. And that
the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the

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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 from many a wild
story in that region of shadows, and the specter is
known at all the country firesides by the name of

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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

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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 lawd for it is
in such little retired Dutch valleys found here and there

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embossed 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

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a rapid stream, where we may see the straw and
bubble riding quietly at anchor are 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

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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 white
of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or as

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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

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his person. He was tall, but exceedingly link, 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 atop, with huge ears, large green

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glassy eyes, and the long snipe nose, so that it
looked like a weathercock 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 around him, one might
have mistaken him for the genus of famine descending upon

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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 copy books. It was most ingeniously
secured at vacant hours by a wine twisted in the

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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 Josta von Hutten from
the mystery of an eel pot. The schoolhouse stood in

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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

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by the authoritative voice of the master in the tone
of menace or command, or her adventure, by the appalling
sound of the birch as he urged some tardy loiter
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 ikabod cranes,

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as 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

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the week, and laying it on those of the strong.
Your mere puny stripling that winded 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

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who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath
the birch. All this he called during his duty by
their parents, and he never inflicted a chastisement without following
it by the assurance so consoliatory to the smarting urchin,
that he would remember it and thank him for it

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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 these smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty
sisters or good housewives from mothers noted for the comforts
of the cupboard. Indeed, it behooved him to keep on

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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 link at the dilating powers of an anaconda.
But to help out his maintenance, he was, according to
the country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at

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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

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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 labours of
their farms. Helped to make hay, mended the fences, took
the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and

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cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside to
all the dormant dignity and absolute sway with which he
larded it in his little empire the school, and became
wonderfully gentle and ingratiating he found favor in the eyes
of the mothers by pettying the children, particularly the youngest,
and like the lion bold which so magnanimously the lamb

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did hold, he would sit with the 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 psomity. It
was a matter of no little vanity to him on

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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

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to be heard in that church, and which may even
be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite
side of the mill pond 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.

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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

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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,
with the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats.
Our peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man

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of letters, therefore was peculiarly happy in the smile 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 epithets on the tombstones

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are sauntering with a whole bevy of them along the
banks of the adjacent mill pond, while the more bashful
country bumpkins hung sheepishly back in being his superior elegance
and address from his half itinerant life. Also, he was
a kind of traveling cassette, carrying the whole budget of

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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,

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by the way, he most firmly and potently believed he
was in fact an odd mixture of small shrewishness and
simple credulity. His appetite for the marvelous and his powers
of digesting it were equally extraordinary, and both had been
increased by his residence in this spell bound region. No

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tail 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 caln over Old Mather's doleful tales, until the

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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 the moan of

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the whipperwill 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, which stream across

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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 ghosts with
the idea that he was struck with the witch's token.
His only recourse on such occasions, either to drown thought
or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes.

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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 late sweetness, long
drawn out, floating from the distant hill or along the
dusky road. Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was

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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 listened
to their marvelous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted
fields and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges and haunted houses,
and particularly of the headless horsemen, or galloping Hessian of

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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,

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and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely
turn round, and that they were half the time top
sea 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 specter dared to

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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

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from some distant window. How often was he appalled by
some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted specter,
beset his very path. How often did he shrink with
curling awe at the sound of his own steps on
the frosty crust beneath his feet, and dread to look

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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

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terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk
in darkness, And though he had seen many specters in
his time, and been more than once beset by Satan
in diver's 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 in all his works, if his path had not

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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. Insomody was Katrina von Tussel, the daughter

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and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was
a blooming glass of fresh eighteen, plump as a partridge,
ripe and melting in 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

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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 Sardom, the tempting stomacher of the
olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat to display

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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 marsel soon found favor in his eyes, more
especially after he had visited her in her paternal mansion.

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Old Baltus von Tussel 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 form, but within those everything was snug, happy and
well conditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not

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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 nesting. A great elm tree
spread its broad branches over it, at the foot of

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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 the neighboring
brook that babbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard
by the farmhouse was a vast born that might have

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served as 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 mortens 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

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or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling and cooing
and bowing about their dames were enjoying the sunshine. On
the roof. Sleek, unwieldly porkers were grunting in the repose
and abundance of their pins. From whence sallied forth now
and then troops of suckling pigs as if to snuff

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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
fretted about it like ill tempered housewives with their peevish,
discontented cry. Before the born door strutted the gallant cock

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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 marsel which
he had discovered. The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked

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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,

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and the ducks pearing cozily in dishes like snug merry
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,

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and peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages. An even bright
chantlet Teer 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. End
of Part one. Dream Audio Books hopes you have enjoyed

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this program