[A Saturday Feature of the First Road Blog]
I am not sure if The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was suggested to Washington Irving by stories in the neighborhood of Tappan Zee, New York in the 1800’s, or if he spun the yarn all by himself and turned a quiet cove on the banks of the Hudson River into a tourist magnet.
I
am also not sure how many people know of the tale outside of the Mid-Atlantic
States; but if they do know it, their exposure will most likely have been in
the 1949 Disney animation. In either case, in my youth one could count on
watching the Disney version around Halloween. This summer the 1820 edition of Irving’s
book popped up on my Kindle and the price was right.
It
is a short story. Reading time is less than an hour-and-a-half, which makes it
only a little more than twice as long as the animation. The events are
purported to have taken place around 1790 when much of the influence of early
Dutch settlers still ran strong. The story revolves around a studious and
superstitious school teacher with an eye to a life of ease. In spite of his general homeliness, he had an ability to impress
the women-folk, terrorize his pupils, and
irritate one Brom Bones – a bully who happened to have his heart set on one
Katrina Van Tassel. And therein lies the tale. Katrina happened to be
the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the region and also happened
to become the object of Ichabod Crane’s affections and visions of wealth.
All
of this and more converges on one autumn evening. It is doubtful it was
Halloween. I don’t think the Dutch community would have yet succumbed to the
Romanist calendar of sacred days. But the mystery, the intrigue, the headless
horsemen, and the pumpkin seem foreordained, perhaps by Irving himself, to merge with All
Hallows Eve.
It
is a fun read with some interesting character studies.
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