Your faithful correspondent has spent a good deal of his earthly allotment meandering (some would say aimlessly) about the Hudson River Valley, to his tastes one of the most beautifully scenic places in the multi-landscaped United States. I only wish, dear readers, that you could see through my eyes the tranquility and the expanse of that winding waterway as the seasons put it through their splendorous and breathtaking changes. Do you know I’ve never seen the Mississippi, but perhaps only it, thanks to one Samuel Langhorne Clemens, could take pride of place to the mighty Hudson in my dream life’s eye. The Hudson is a legendary river, and the villages and towns that have sprung up alongside its banks — places with names such as Croton-on-Hudson, and Dobbs Ferry, and Piermont, and Nyack — have engendered myths and legends of their own that have, in their turn, gone on to stitch themselves quietly into the quilt of the American Imagination.
I have over the years been a frequent visitor to those riverbank villages and towns, replete as they are with eccentrics, and old houses, and antiques, and bookshops. I have taken my anonymous ease in their out-of-the-way pubs and taverns, and been made to feel welcome by their local residents, listening to their stories and their music, and, from time to time, their gossip. But they’re a river people and, time march so resolutely forward as it may, a river people they will remain, perhaps always keeping that little extra something to themselves, to be revealed, if at all, only among themselves alone, and in my absence.
The Author and the Setting
Washington Irving was born in New York City (well within striking distance of the Hudson River Valley) on April 3, 1783. Perhaps you’ve heard of the infamous Diedrich Knickerbocker and his bawdy tales of early 19th Century New York. If so, then we’re talking about the selfsame Mr. Irving, who penned those tales under that pseudonym in the year 1809. He loved the majesty and the mystery of the Hudson River and came to immortalize both in the Halloween classic, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (the official title of which was The Legend of Sleepy Hollow — Found Among the Papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker). Diedrich, or Washington, knew the ways of the river people of that area, and that time, and felt himself compelled to pass along some of their Halloween magic, thanks be to God, to us in the present day, and to future generations in prosperity. I’ll let him set the scene….
“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.” Nearby to Tarrytown (its modern spelling), only about two miles, is a little valley that Mr. Irving describes as “one of the quietest places in the whole world.” The name of that little valley is, of course, Sleepy Hollow, the locus of our legend.
The Story
Shall I provide you with a brief recounting of the principal elements of the story and the principal characters? Yes? (It saddens me to worry that these most important things are drifting slowly, but steadily, into oblivion. Perhaps we can help to put a stop to that trend, you and I.) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is essentially the story of three people: Ichabod Crane, Katrina Van Tassel and Abraham Van Brunt, known popularly as Brom Van Brunt, and, more popularly still, by the nickname “Brom Bones.” Ichabod, as his peerless name would suggest, is the bookish schoolmaster, the superstitious (yet impeccably innocent) student of Cotton Mather’s History of New England Witchcraft, and the lover of ease and comfort who is, all too predictably, possessed of a “soft and foolish heart” when it comes to creatures of the opposite sex. Katrina, as Mr. Irving describes her, is a “blooming lass of fresh eighteen, plump as a partridge, ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her [prosperous] father’s peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette….” Brom Bones is, well, the way you would expect someone known as Brom Bones to be — “broad-shouldered and double-jointed,” “having a mingled air of fun and arrogance,” and “always ready for either a fight or a frolic,” having “more mischief than ill will in his composition,” with “a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom.”
And how do these three principal characters interact? It’s a semi-comic (what James Joyce used to call a “joco-serious”) love triangle. Yes, a love triangle, yet again! Ichabod loves Katrina, and the “country squire” life she represents; Brom loves Katrina; and Katrina loves … it’s not, I suppose, entirely clear. It’s a classic predicament that the author sets up for us: the Beautiful Woman, but fickle, facing the choice of Brains versus Brawn, and in a rural society, no less, that naturally leaned toward Brawn. Against the backdrop of that familiar situation, however, the author sets the chilling and eponymous Legend of Sleepy Hollow, complete with its sinister, anatomically-challenged ghoul. As we all know: “The dominant spirit … that haunts [that] 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.” (A nice touch — don’t you think? — the “namelessness” of the battle.)
Legend vs. Text
You can see, no doubt, where this is going. Or can you? I have a sneaking feeling that the populace at large has forgotten what the “real” Legend of Sleepy Hollow (that is, Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow) really has to say. Don’t take my word for it, you’ll have to satisfy yourself by recourse to the actual text, but I think that the Legend of Sleepy Hollow persists as a much darker “legend” than “what’s-really-in-the-book.” The legend, in the popular mind, has it that Ichabod was run down by the Headless Horseman — and killed by a well-aimed Jack-o’-Lantern to the head — on his way home one fateful night from a soiree at Old Man Van Tassel’s. But is that the reality, as Mr. Irving actually tells it? I quote a much-overlooked passage of the author at length: “It is true an old farmer … brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still alive; that he had left the neighborhood … partly in mortification at having been suddenly dismissed by the heiress [Katrina]; that he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country [and become successful]. Brom Bones too, who shortly after his rival’s disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina 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.” You, dear readers, tell me what we are to deduce from such lines.
Your faithful correspondent knows what he deduces from them. And it is consistent with his own personal experience of the area and its people — as I said at the beginning, and I believe it still, a river people to the end. There is, at the end of the day, no new thing under the sun, only new ways of describing, of expressing, what we find there. To that end, the great Washington Irving on this our season: “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.”
Alas, it didn’t turn out that way for old Ichabod, but perhaps it didn’t turn out so badly for him either. I suppose that’s what legends are all about. In any case, do have a Happy Halloween, and God bless!
