[adapted]

by
Washington Irving

Found among the Papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker

A quiet land where sleepy heads could rest,
Where dreams floated by like clouds in the sky,
And castles made of air passed gently by,
Around the soft and glowing summer light.

In one of the large, peaceful bays that shape the east side of the Hudson River, there is a wide part of the river called the Tappan Zee. The old Dutch sailors used to slow down there and pray to Saint Nicholas for safety while crossing. Near this spot is a small country town or port, which some people call Greensburgh. But most people know it better by the name Tarry Town. This name was given, people say, by the wives in the area, because their husbands would “tarry”—or stay too long—at the village tavern on market days. I can’t say for sure if that’s true, but I mention it just to be clear and exact.

Not far from this town, maybe about two miles away, there is a small valley, or low piece of land between hills. It’s one of the quietest places in the whole world. A little stream flows through it, making just enough sound to help someone fall asleep. Sometimes you can hear a quail calling or a woodpecker tapping, but those are almost the only sounds that ever break the peaceful silence.

I remember that when I was a boy, my first time hunting squirrels was in a grove of tall walnut trees that grows on one side of this valley. I had wandered into the woods around noon, when everything is extra quiet. I was shocked by how loud my gunshot was, and how it echoed through the hills. If I ever wanted to escape the world and all its noise and problems, and spend the rest of my life in peace, I think I would choose this little valley.

Because of how sleepy and quiet the place is, and because of the unusual people who live there—descendants of the first Dutch settlers—this hidden valley has long been called Sleepy Hollow. The young men from the area are known as the Sleepy Hollow Boys all across the countryside. A dreamy, lazy feeling seems to cover the land and fill the air. Some say the place was cursed by a strange German doctor back in the early days. Others say a powerful Indian chief, who was like a wizard, used to hold his magic meetings there before white people came to the land. Whatever the truth is, something still seems to cast a spell on the place. The people who live there walk around as if in a dream. They believe in ghosts and magic, have strange dreams and visions, and often say they see weird things and hear music or voices in the air.

The whole area is full of ghost stories, haunted spots, and old superstitions. Shooting stars and bright meteors fly over the valley more than anywhere else. The nightmare, with all her scary tricks, seems to love this place the most.

But the most powerful ghost in this magical land—the one who seems to be the leader of all the spirits in the air—is a man on horseback without a head. Some say he is the ghost of a Hessian soldier whose head was blown off by a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. People often see him riding fast through the darkness of night, as if the wind itself is carrying him. He doesn’t only stay in the valley, either—sometimes he’s seen on nearby roads, especially near a church not far away.

Some of the local storytellers, who have carefully collected all the tales about him, say that the soldier’s body was buried in that churchyard. They believe the ghost rides out every night to search for his missing head, and when people hear him galloping wildly through Sleepy Hollow, like a strong midnight wind, it’s because he’s running late and rushing to get back to the grave before morning.

That’s the main idea of the legend, which has inspired many spooky stories in this shadowy area. Everyone around here knows the ghost by one name: The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

What’s strange is that this dreamy way of thinking isn’t just found in the people who were born in the valley. Even people who move there from other places soon fall under the same spell. No matter how wide awake they were before, they end up daydreaming, seeing things, and believing in ghosts, just like the locals.

I speak well of this peaceful place, because little old Dutch valleys like this one—tucked away here and there in New York—stay the same over time. While the rest of the country is always changing and rushing forward with new people and new ways, places like Sleepy Hollow stay quiet and still. They are like tiny pools of calm water along the edge of a fast river, where leaves and bubbles gently float in circles, untouched by the rushing stream. Even though it’s been many years since I walked through the sleepy hills of Sleepy Hollow, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the same trees and the same families still there, living quietly as always.

In this quiet corner of the world, about thirty years ago, there lived a man named Ichabod Crane. He stayed in Sleepy Hollow to teach the children of the area. Ichabod was from Connecticut—a state known for sending out both pioneers to explore the forests and teachers to teach young minds.

The name “Crane” was perfect for him, because he looked like a long, skinny bird. He was very tall and thin, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that hung way out of his sleeves, and feet so big they looked like shovels. His whole body seemed loosely held together. His head was small and flat on top, with big ears, big shiny green eyes, and a long nose like a bird’s beak. Altogether, his head looked like a weather-vane sitting on his skinny neck, ready to turn in the wind.

If you saw him walking across the top of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes flapping all around him, you might think he was the spirit of hunger walking across the land—or a scarecrow that had run away from a cornfield.

Ichabod Crane’s schoolhouse was a small building with just one big room. It was made out of logs in a rough and simple way. Some windows had glass, but others were patched with pages from old school notebooks. When school wasn’t in session, the building was locked in a clever way. A bendy branch was twisted through the door handle, and sticks were placed against the window shutters. This meant that a thief could get in easily—but getting out would be much harder. The man who built the schoolhouse, named Yost Van Houten, may have gotten this idea from how eel traps work.

The schoolhouse stood in a quiet but nice spot at the bottom of a hill full of trees. A small stream ran nearby, and a tall birch tree stood at one end of the building. On a sleepy summer day, you could hear the soft voices of students reading their lessons, which sounded like bees buzzing in a hive. Sometimes the quiet was broken by Ichabod Crane’s loud voice giving orders—or even by the sharp sound of the birch branch being used to keep a lazy student on track.

To be fair, Ichabod was a serious and honest teacher. He always remembered the old saying: “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” So, Ichabod’s students were definitely not spoiled!

But don’t think he was mean or cruel. He didn’t enjoy hurting the children. Instead, he was fair and careful. He didn’t punish the small, shy boys who got scared easily. But if a strong and stubborn boy misbehaved, Ichabod would give him twice the punishment to make up for it. This was his way of “doing his duty by their parents.” After a spanking, he would always tell the sore little boy that he would remember the lesson and be thankful for it one day.

After school, Ichabod was more like a friend to the older boys. On days off, he would walk the younger children home—especially if they had pretty sisters or kind mothers who were known for keeping tasty food in their kitchens. Ichabod had to stay friendly with his students because he didn’t earn much money. His pay from the school was small, and it wouldn’t have been enough even to buy food. He ate a lot—like a snake that could swallow a whole meal at once!

To help with this, he stayed at the homes of the farmers whose children he taught. He lived with each family for one week at a time, going around the neighborhood with all his belongings tied in a cotton cloth.

So the families wouldn’t feel it was too expensive to feed and house him, Ichabod helped out in many ways. He helped with light farm work, made hay, fixed fences, took horses to the river, herded cows home, and chopped firewood for winter. At school he acted like a strict king, but at home he was kind and polite. The mothers liked him, especially because he was gentle with the little ones. Like a brave lion being kind to a tiny lamb, he would sit with a child on one knee and rock a cradle with his foot for hours.

Besides being a teacher, Ichabod Crane was also the singing master in the neighborhood. He made extra money by teaching the young people how to sing songs from the church. On Sundays, he loved standing in front of the church gallery with a group of chosen singers. In his own mind, he thought he sang better than the preacher! His loud voice could be heard above everyone else’s. Some people even say that on quiet Sunday mornings, you can still hear some of his special singing sounds coming from that church—floating all the way across the millpond. People say those sounds came straight from Ichabod Crane’s nose!

In this way, and by using his many little tricks—“by hook and by crook,” as folks said—Ichabod managed to get by just fine. Many people who didn’t know how hard teaching was thought that he had a very easy life.

In the countryside, the schoolmaster was often seen as an important person among the ladies. He was thought of as a kind of gentle, polite man with fancy tastes, much better than the rough young farm boys. Only the preacher was thought to be smarter. When Ichabod came to visit a farmhouse, it often caused a little excitement at the tea table. The family might even bring out an extra plate of cakes or candy—or use the shiny silver teapot.

So Ichabod was always popular with the young women in the area. On Sundays, between church services, he liked to show off in the churchyard. He picked wild grapes for the girls, read funny poems from the tombstones, or took walks with a whole group of them along the edge of the millpond. The shy farm boys hung back, feeling jealous of how smooth and charming Ichabod was.

Because he moved from house to house, Ichabod also became like a walking newspaper. He carried all the latest gossip and news from one home to another. The women were always happy to see him. They also believed he was very smart. He had read several whole books and knew all about a scary one called Cotton Mather’s History of New England Witchcraft. Ichabod truly believed in all the strange stories in it.

He was, in fact, a funny mix of cleverness and childlike belief. He loved strange stories and believed every one of them. Living in this magical place made it even worse. No tale was too strange or spooky for him to believe.

After school in the afternoons, Ichabod liked to lie down on the soft clover grass beside the brook near his schoolhouse. He would read his scary books until it got too dark to see. Then, he would walk home through swamps, streams, and spooky woods to whatever farmhouse he was staying at that week.

At that spooky time of day, every sound made his imagination run wild. The sad cry of the whip-poor-will bird, the croaking of a tree toad before a storm, the ghostly hoot of an owl, or even the rustle of birds flying away from a bush—each one sent chills down his spine. The fireflies sparkled in the dark, and if a bright one flew too close, it would make him jump. If a big beetle bumped into him, poor Ichabod almost fainted, thinking it was a sign from a witch!

When he got too scared, he would sing church songs loudly to cheer himself up or scare away ghosts. People in Sleepy Hollow, sitting by their doors at night, would sometimes hear his long, slow singing floating down from the hills or along the dark road—and it filled them with awe and wonder.

Another thing Ichabod Crane enjoyed—even though it scared him—was spending long winter nights with the old Dutch women. They would sit by the fire, spinning yarn, while apples roasted and sizzled on the hearth. He loved to listen to their amazing ghost stories—about haunted fields, haunted rivers, haunted bridges, haunted houses, and most of all, about the Headless Horseman. They also called him the Galloping Hessian of the Hollow.

The old women loved hearing Ichabod’s stories too. He told them all about witches, strange signs in the sky, and scary things people had seen and heard back in the old days in Connecticut. He even frightened them with talk about comets and shooting stars—and with the shocking idea that the world actually spins, so we are upside down half the time!

Even though it was fun to sit in the warm chimney corner with the fire glowing red, where no ghost would dare to show its face, Ichabod always paid for this fun later—when he had to walk home alone. How scary the world seemed on snowy nights! Strange shapes and shadows followed him through the ghostly light. He stared longingly at little glows of light coming from faraway windows. Sometimes a snow-covered bush looked like a ghost dressed in a white sheet standing right in his path! The sound of his own footsteps crunching on the icy ground made him freeze with fear. He was afraid to look behind him, worried that something strange might be following close behind! And when the wind rushed through the trees, he was sure it must be the Galloping Hessian racing through the night!

Still, these were only nighttime fears—just shadows of the mind. And although Ichabod claimed he had seen many ghosts in his life—and had even met the Devil himself in many forms—when the sun came up, all the fear disappeared. He would have lived quite happily, despite all the ghosts and goblins, if his life hadn’t been changed by something even more confusing than all of them put together—and that was: a woman.

One of the students who came to Ichabod’s singing lessons each week was Katrina Van Tassel. She was the only child of a rich Dutch farmer. Katrina was a lovely girl, just eighteen years old. She was round and healthy like a partridge, sweet and rosy-cheeked like one of her father’s peaches. Everyone admired her, not just for her looks, but also because she was expected to inherit a lot of money and land.

She was a bit of a flirt too. You could tell by her clothes, which mixed old styles with new ones, chosen to show off her beauty. She wore real yellow-gold jewelry that had belonged to her great-great-grandmother, who had brought it from Saardam. She wore a fancy stomacher from the old days—and a very short skirt that showed off the prettiest foot and ankle in the whole countryside.

Ichabod Crane had a soft and silly heart when it came to women. So it’s no surprise that such a lovely girl quickly caught his eye—especially after he visited her at her family’s home. Old Baltus Van Tassel, Katrina’s father, was the perfect picture of a rich, cheerful, and kind-hearted farmer. He didn’t often think about the world beyond his own land, but everything inside his farm was neat, happy, and full of good things. He was pleased with his wealth, but not proud or showy. What made him proud was having plenty of everything and living in comfort.

His house stood beside the Hudson River, in one of those green, peaceful places that Dutch farmers love to live in. A big elm tree stretched out its wide branches over the house. At the bottom of the tree, a spring of cool, sweet water bubbled up from a barrel, then flowed sparkling through the grass to a nearby stream that babbled over rocks and past little trees.

Not far from the house stood a huge barn—so big it could have been a church! Every window and hole in it seemed to burst with the riches of the farm. Inside, someone was always busy beating grain from morning till night. Birds like swallows and martins flew around the roof, chirping and darting about. Pigeons sat on the roof—some looking at the sky, some resting with their heads under their wings, and some puffing up and cooing to their mates.

Fat pigs rested lazily in their pens, grunting happily, while groups of baby pigs now and then ran outside to sniff the air. Fancy white geese swam in a pond nearby, guarding groups of ducks like little boat captains. Rows of turkeys gobbled through the yard, and noisy Guinea fowls rushed around, complaining like grumpy old ladies. In front of the barn strutted the proud rooster, showing off like a soldier, a father, and a gentleman. He flapped his shiny wings and crowed with joy, then scratched at the dirt to dig up a treat, which he kindly called his hungry family over to eat.

Ichabod’s mouth watered as he looked at all this delicious promise of food for the winter. In his hungry imagination, he saw every pig roasting with pudding inside and an apple in its mouth. The pigeons were tucked into pies with crust blankets. The geese were floating in gravy, and the ducks were sitting together in dishes like happy married couples, covered with warm onion sauce. The pigs would become tasty bacon and juicy ham. The turkeys would be tied up with string, stuffed, and surrounded by spicy sausages. Even the rooster, proud and loud, would end up lying in a side dish with his feet in the air, as if asking for mercy—but only after death!

As Ichabod dreamed of all this food, his big green eyes rolled over the fat fields of grass, the golden crops of wheat, rye, buckwheat, and corn, and the apple trees heavy with fruit that surrounded the warm home of the Van Tassels. His heart began to long for Katrina—who would one day own all this. His mind quickly imagined how it could all be sold for money, and how that money could be used to buy huge lands in the wild West—and build big wooden houses there.

In fact, his imagination was already living out his dream. He saw Katrina, his wife, with lots of children, sitting on top of a wagon filled with pots, pans, and old household things. He saw himself riding proudly on a gentle horse, a baby horse following behind, as they all set off for Kentucky, or Tennessee—or who knows where!

When Ichabod went into the house, he was completely in love. It was one of those big farmhouses, with tall roofs that sloped low to the sides, built in the old style of the first Dutch settlers. The wide roof stretched over the front porch, which could be closed up during bad weather. Under this porch hung tools like flails, horse harnesses, fishing nets, and other farming things. Benches lined the walls for sitting in summer, and at one end was a big spinning wheel, and at the other end, a churn for making butter. This porch was clearly used for many different jobs.

From this porch, Ichabod stepped into the main hall of the house, which was the heart of the home and where the family usually stayed. There, rows of shiny pewter dishes were lined up on a long shelf and sparkled in the light. In one corner was a big bag of wool, waiting to be spun into thread. In another, there was some homespun cloth fresh from the loom. Corn hung from the walls along with strings of dried apples and peaches, mixed in with red peppers. A door left slightly open let Ichabod peek into the fancy parlor. There, chairs with claw-shaped feet and dark shiny tables stood like treasures. The fireplace tools—shovel and tongs—shone brightly behind some dried asparagus. Fake oranges and sea shells decorated the mantel, while colorful strings of bird eggs hung above it. In the middle of the room, an ostrich egg hung from the ceiling, and in a corner cupboard, left open on purpose, were piles of old silver and carefully fixed china.

From the moment Ichabod saw this magical home, he lost all peace of mind. All he could think about now was how to win the heart of Van Tassel’s daughter. But this wasn’t going to be easy. He had more trouble ahead than the knights in old stories, who only had to fight giants, wizards, or dragons, and then break through iron gates to rescue their lady. In the end, the knight always got the girl.

Ichabod, on the other hand, had to win over a clever country girl, full of moods and surprises, and he had to face real people—strong and angry young men—who were all in love with her too. They guarded her heart like a castle, and though they watched each other with suspicion, they were quick to join together against any new rival.

The strongest of these rivals was a big, loud, wild fellow named Abraham Van Brunt. Everyone called him Brom, or more often, Brom Bones. He was the local hero, famous for his strength and boldness. He had wide shoulders, strong joints, curly black hair, and a round face that mixed fun with pride. Because of his huge body and strong arms, he was given the nickname Brom Bones, which everyone used. He was known as a great horse rider, as skilled as any wild rider from faraway lands. He always won at races and cockfights. Because strength wins respect in the countryside, he was the judge in many arguments. He would tilt his hat to one side, speak loudly, and people listened to him without question.

He was always ready for a fight or a party, but he meant no real harm. Even with all his loudness and rough ways, he had a playful, friendly heart deep down. He had a few close friends who copied everything he did, and with them, he rode all around the area, joining every party or quarrel for miles.

In the cold months, he wore a fur cap with a big fox tail waving on top. When people at a country gathering saw this famous cap from far away, jumping around among a group of riders, they knew something wild was coming. Sometimes at midnight, Brom and his gang would come thundering past the farms, yelling and laughing like a gang of wild riders. The old ladies would wake with a start, listen for a second, and then say, “Ah, there goes Brom Bones and his gang!”

The neighbors felt many things about him—fear, respect, and even liking. And whenever some wild trick or country fight happened, they would nod their heads and say, “You can be sure Brom Bones had something to do with it.”

This wild and rowdy hero, Brom Bones, had for some time been paying special attention to the lovely Katrina. His rough kind of flirting was more like the playful hugs of a big bear than anything gentle, but people whispered that she didn’t exactly tell him to stop. In fact, when Brom started to visit her, most other men gave up right away. They didn’t want to challenge someone so strong and bold. So when his horse was seen tied up outside the Van Tassel house on a Sunday night—a sure sign that Brom was inside courting—it was like a signal for the other suitors to walk away sadly and look for love elsewhere.

This was the powerful rival that Ichabod Crane had to face. To be honest, most braver men would have backed down, and smarter men might have known there was no chance. But Ichabod had a mix of flexibility and determination. He was like a bendy young tree—he could lean under pressure, but he didn’t break. The moment things eased up, he sprang back up, proud as ever.

Trying to compete with Brom openly would have been foolish. Brom wasn’t someone who let others get in the way when he was in love—he was like the fierce hero Achilles from the old stories. So Ichabod used a quieter, sneakier way to get closer to Katrina. Thanks to his job as the singing teacher, he had a reason to visit the farmhouse often. He wasn’t worried about being stopped by strict parents either. Balt Van Tassel was a kind and easygoing man who loved his daughter even more than his favorite pipe. Like a wise father, he let her do what she wanted. His busy little wife had too much work with the house and chickens to pay much attention. As she often said, ducks and geese are silly and need looking after, but girls can take care of themselves.