STORY OF THE DAY

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is an 1820 short story by American author Washington Irving contained in his collection of 34 essays and short stories titled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Irving wrote the story while living in Birmingham, England.

Along with Irving's companion piece "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is among the earliest examples of American fiction with enduring popularity, especially during Halloween because of a character known as the Headless Horseman believed to be a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball in battle.

It has been adapted for the screen several times, including a 1922 silent film and in 1949, a Walt Disney animation as one of two segments in the package film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.

Plot

The story is set in 1790 in the countryside near the former Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, in a secluded glen known as Sleepy Hollow. It relates the tale of Ichabod Crane, a lean, lanky, superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut. Ichabod intends to woo Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter of a wealthy farmer, in order to procure her family's riches for himself. He competes for her affection with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy. Unable to goad Ichabod into fighting for Katrina's hand, Brom instead wages a campaign of harassment against the schoolmaster, plaguing him with a series of pranks and practical jokes.

One autumn night, Ichabod is invited to attend a harvest party at the Van Tassel homestead. At the party, Brom tells the story of the Headless Horseman, the notorious ghost of a Hessian trooper decapitated by a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. The Horseman is supposedly buried in a churchyard in Sleepy Hollow and rises from his grave every night to search for his missing head but is supernaturally barred from crossing a wooden bridge that spans a nearby stream.

Katrina rejects Ichabod before he leaves. He leaves the party crestfallen and rides home on a borrowed plow horse named Gunpowder. He encounters a cloaked rider and believes it to be the Headless Horseman. Ichabod rides for his life with the apparition close behind. At the bridge, the Horseman rears his horse and hurls his severed head directly at Crane, knocking him off his horse.

The next morning, Gunpowder is found eating the grass at his master's gate, but Ichabod has disappeared from the area, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones. Although the true nature of both the Headless Horseman and Ichabod's disappearance is left open to interpretation, it is implied that the Horseman was actually Brom. A shattered pumpkin is found near Ichabod's hat where he fell, suggesting that the severed head thrown at him was merely a jack-o'-lantern and that Crane survived the fall from Gunpowder and fled Sleepy Hollow in horror.

In a postscript, a Mr. Knickerbocker recounts hearing the tale at a Corporation meeting in Manhattan, narrated by a humorous, shabby gentleman. The story ends with mixed reactions from the audience, including laughter and skepticism. A serious old gentleman questions the moral of the story, to which the storyteller humorously responds that the tale proves life's situations have their advantages if one can find humor in them. The old gentleman remains puzzled, and the storyteller admits he doesn't believe half of the story himself.

Grateful thanks to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.