Washington Irving published the Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 1820. I was able to read it for free on my phone. This is one of the books that you can grab online with a ton of other pieces of old, classical literature. This is one of Irving's short stories. It's charming, descriptive, and short. Duh... after work tiredness, can't blame me.
I am personally not a fan of modern Sleepy Hollow spin offs. While Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow was a fun and creative movie, it by all means did not serve much homage to Irving. Sorry, I just can't help it as an English major. I wrote an entire paper basically explaining why the movie sucked.
The Hessian in Irving's work is a nameless trooper, who unfortunately had his head knocked off in an unknown Revolutionary War battle. While I don't want to give away Irving's story (it actually is very different from all of the movies, etc), his work revolves more around his character's personalities. Ichabod Crane certainly is a one of a kind major. I guess I can spoil a bit: Unreliable narrator. *Cough*
Irving's work mostly had me hooked because of his descriptions. I enjoyed his characters. They were pretty dimensional for their time period. What I liked the most was the descriptions of New York. Sleepy Hollow / Tarrytown was a half an hour drive south or so from where I lived. While I have never been there, I am familiar with the New York state landscapes and forests, mountains and rivers. Irving brought me back there, at least for a little while.
Our headless friend was probably based off of German folklore about "The Wild Huntsman", a phantom who was sometimes missing his head.
Around 1776, the British occupied south of the Bronx river, and Americans situated themselves in Peekskill. Apparently, some Jagers were apart of some of the skirmishes. It was actually reported that a Jager's headless body was found after a battle and was buried in a grave by the Van Tassel family. Though, the body was found in White Plains, New York, which is 9 miles from Sleepy Hollow. Ironically enough, an American general, William Heath wrote about a defense on Halloween:
"A shot from the American cannon at this place took off the head of a Hessian artillery-man. They also left one of the artillery horses dead on the field. What other loss they sustained was not known"
History is pretty cool.
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