Greetings. Tis I, the Headless Horseman. Welcome to a very special five-part Halloween presentation from Gen Z Media. If you liked listening to The Hollow, then you probably know it was based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. a short story written by Washington Irving, 200 years ago. It is one of the most famous scary stories of all time. We present it here as an audiobook in its original text. A warning to all mortals. What you're about to hear is a tale from 1820.
Many things have changed in our culture since then. You're going to hear some outdated language, some outdated gender roles, and references to things like corporal punishment in schools and bullying behavior. Also, it's kinda scary. Listener discretion. advised it is remarkable that the visionary propensity i have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley but is
unconsciously imbibed by everyone who resides there for a time. However wide awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure in a little time. to inhale the witching influence of the air and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams and see apparitions. I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud, for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys found here and there embosomed in the great state of New York that...
Population, manners, and customs remain fixed, while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country... sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water which border a rapid stream, where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or
slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet i question whether i should not still find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom in this by place of nature their abode in a remote period of American history, that is to say some
Thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or as he expressed it, tarried in Sleepy Hollow. for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest.
and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodsmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lame, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small.
and flat at top with huge ears, large green glassy eyes and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow. eloped from a cornfield. His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room rudely constructed of logs.
the windows partly glazed and partly patched with leaves of old copybooks. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours by a wythe. twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the window shutters, so that, though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment at getting out. an idea most probably borrowed by the architect Joost van Houten from The Mystery of an Eel Pot. The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation.
just at the foot of a woody hill with a brook running close by and a formidable birch tree growing at one end of it from hence the low murmur of his pupils voices conning over their lessons might be heard in a drowsy summer's day like the hum of a beehive, interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master. Children, be quiet! in the tone of menace, or command, or peradventure by the appalling sound of the birch.
as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, spare the rod. and spoiled the child. Ichabod Crane scholars certainly were not spoiled. I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their subjects. On the contrary.
He administered justice with discrimination rather than severity, taking the burden off the backs of the weak and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling that winced at the least flourish of the rod was passed by with indulgence. But the claims of justice... were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough-wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. This hurts me, lad!
All this he called doing his duty by their parents. And he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance so consolatory to the smarting urchin that he would remember it and thank him for it. The longest day he had to live. I'm sure you'll thank me for this one day. Mm-hmm. Hey! Come back here, okay?
When school hours were over, he was even the companion and playmate of the larger boys, and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones home who happened to have pretty sisters or... Good housewives for mothers noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed, it behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was small.
and would have scarcely been sufficient to furnish him with the daily bread, for he was a huge feeder. And though Lank had the dilating powers of an anaconda, But to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he instructed. With these, He lived successively one week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.
That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, He had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. Yes, I'd like to offer my services to you, sir. Have you ever done this kind of work before? Oh, my. Well, certainly. All right. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms. helped to make hay. Mended the fences.
took the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, cut wood for the winter fire he laid aside too all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire the school and became wonderfully gentle, ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children. Oh, that's quite all right, lad. You'll be okay. Particularly the youngest. And like the lion bold which Willems magnanimously the lamb did hold,
He would sit with the child on one knee and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together. In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing master of the neighborhood. and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays to take his station in front of the church gallery. with a band of chosen singers, where in his own mind he completely carried away the palm from the parson.
Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation, and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off. quite to the opposite side of the mill pond on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane.
Thus, by divers little makeshifts in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated by hook and by crook, the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough and was thought... by all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it. The schoolmaster... is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood, being considered a kind of...
idle gentleman-like personage of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea table of a farmhouse and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats or peradventure the parade of the silver teapot.
Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard.
Between services on Sundays, gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees, reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones, or sauntering with a whole bevy of them along the banks of the adjacent millpond, while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address. From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of traveling gazette.
carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's History of New England Witchcraft. in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed. He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness.
and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvelous and his powers of digesting it were equally extraordinary, and both had been increased.
by his residence in this spellbound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight. After his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather's direful tales until the gathering dusk of evening.
made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and offal would land to the farmhouse, where he happened to be quartered, Every sound of nature at that witching hour fluttered his excited imagination, the moan of the whippoorwill from the hillside. The boding cry of the tree toad. That harbinger of storm. The dreary hooting of the screech owl.
or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places now and then startled him. As one of uncommon brightness would stream upon his path, And if by chance a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging its blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token.
His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes. and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody.
in linked sweetness long drawn out, floating from the distant hill or along the dusky road. Another of his sources of fearful pleasure, was to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives as they sat spinning by the fire with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth. and listen to their marvelous tales of ghosts and goblins and haunted fields and haunted brooks and haunted bridges and haunted houses and particularly of the headless horsemen.
or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft and of the direful omens and portentous sights. and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut, and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars and... with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy. But if there was a pleasure in all this...
While snugly cuddling in the chimney corner of a chamber that was all of a ready glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no specter dared to show its face, it was dearly purchased. by the terrors of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night?
With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window? How often was he appalled by some... "'shrub covered with snow, "'which, like a sheeted specter, beset his very path.' How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet and dread to look over his shoulder?
lest he should behold some uncouth being trampling close behind him. And how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast. howling among the trees in the idea that it was the galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings. What was that? All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness. And though he had seen many specters in his time,
and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils. And he would have passed a pleasant life of it. In despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, Goblins and the whole race of witches put together, and that was a woman.
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