This "tale as old as time" has been through countless re-tellings, each seemingly a slightly different version. Perhaps the most well-known, other than the beautifully-written original, which is included at the back of this volume, is the Disney movie version about the lank schoolteacher who falls for the beautiful Katrina Van Tassle, a romance which remains at the heart of the story.
So, what is this legend all about? The original is, of course, a short story by Washington Irving, which appears in his collection of 34 short stories, "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." He wrote it, not in the US, but in Birmingham, England. "Legend" was originally published in 1820, which was not all that long after the period in which it was supposed to have occurred. Many of the locations in the story are real places, or based closely on real-life examples, such as Tarrytown, New York. The nearby small village of Sleepy Hollow was supposed to have been "bewitched" or cursed even before the events of 1790, when the story was supposed to have taken place. It may have been a haunted place even among the Native Americans, before Hudson came across it.
The subject of the story is the Headless Horseman, supposedly a Hessian soldier who was beheaded by a cannonball during the Revolution. It's curious that headless horsemen are much more a feature of Northern European legends and ghost stories than their American counterparts. As with most tales, there may be a grain of truth to this one: the decapitated Hessian soldier may have actually been a real individual, sort of. A headless corpse found in the small town of Sleepy Hollow after a skirmish during the Revolutionary War period was apparently buried by the actual Van Tassel family, in an unmarked grave in the Old Dutch Burying Ground, which you can still visit today. The famous bridge is also real, sort of: the original was set over the Pocantico River near the Old Dutch Church and Burying Ground also, but it's been replaced with a modern one.
Enter Ichabod Crane, a tall, lanky schoolmaster who hailed from Connecticut, who competes with Brom Bones, for the hand of eighteen-year-old Katrina, a wealthy heiress from a well-established farming family, whose father, Baltus Van Tassel, is a respected resident. The character was apparently named for an army captain while Irving was an aide-de-camp to the New York governor in 1814. Katrina was also a real person, as Irving apparently had stayed with her family for a short time and asked permission to use her name! He reportedly even told the family that he liked to base his characters on actual people he had met, and frequently named his characters for them.
That's kind of where the similarities between the original story and this novelization, based on the movie of the late 90s, end. The Ichabod of the original story doesn't embody anything scientific at all, notwithstanding his profession: he's highly superstitious, not skeptical, as the Johnny Depp movie version, which portrays him as a Yankee police inspector who brings scientific trappings and his own inventions out to the sticks to investigate the murder of three local residence. I won't include a bunch of spoilers, but there are sufficient differences to make the read worthwhile, if you're looking for a brief diversion. The original version is also included at the end of the novelization, and it's certainly worth the read.
The story has had longstanding renown: there have been numerous film and stage adaptations, as well as even radio programs. Various places have been named for the story, such as Sleepy Hollow, Illinois, where many of the street names reflect characters from the story, and there was even a US postage stamp issued featuring the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, in 1974. As for Irving himself, he continued to write, including a multi-volume biography of the life of George Washington, and spent his remaining years in Sunnyside, NY, before his death in 1859. However, his legacy endures, along with his famous tale of the supernatural, one of the most beloved in American literary history.
Christa P. (romeo) reviewed Sleepy Hollow: A Novelization (Includes the Classic Short Story) on + 334 more book reviews 
