"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Part Two

In which Ichabod thoroughly enjoys himself at the party, up until its disappointing end, and has a fateful encounter on the ride home with a horse-mounted man that may or may not have a head.



It's funny, I'd rather forgotten until re-reading this story for the blog that "Sleepy Hollow" doesn't really have any of what you might call "dialogue" in it. Huh.

Illustrations! As last time, the color illustrations are by F. O. C. Darley, 1849, while the black and white ones are by other artists as noted, from 1863.

Oh, first a note for 2:40: the cedar-bird is referred to as wearing a montero cap, which was a type of Spanish hunting cap from the 1600s that has a band going around the crown that can be folded down to protect the ears and/or face, rather like a balaclava.

3:40 - "The Tappan Zee," by John Frederick Kensett

First, the artist. John Frederick Kensett was one of the most well-known and successful artists in the "second generation" of the Hudson River School.  Perhaps his most well-known and longest-lasting contribution to the art world is less his actual work, and more as one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Next, the actual illustration. I probably should've mentioned this last time, but the Tappan Zee is a natural widening of the Hudson River (its widest point, in fact). Its name is taken from the Tappan group of the Lenape tribe, though it's unlikely that's what they called themselves, and the Dutch word "zee," meaning "sea." Several times, the story mentions the bluffs along its edge; these are the basalt cliffs known as the Palisades.

More after the break!

One of the party foods that Ichabod drools over is the olykoek, which appears to just be a Dutch regionalism for "doughnut," though since Irving refers to doughnuts by name immediately prior, and states that olykoek is "tenderer," there may be some differences that escape me.

9:37 - "Ichabod dancing with Katrina Van Tassel," by F. O. C. Darley

A couple of times during the story, such as at 10:37, we hear the term "mynheer." It can be inferred from context, but this is a Dutch term that basically means "mister" or (when used as a noun) "gentleman." It's related to the possibly more familiar German phrase "mein Herr," (think back to WWII movies you've seen. Yup, there you go.) which means literally "my sir," which in English we'd probably say as "my good sir" or "my good man," because we like insincere flattery.

12:45 - "Church at Sleepy Hollow," by William Hart (from a sketch by J. H. Hill)

At 15:20, we hear about "damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains" where a pillion is a pad or extra seat behind the main seat on a saddle (or, more recently on a motorcycle or moped) where a passenger can ride. It, um, has a more popular but less polite name in contemporary American English that I will not repeat here.

24:17 - "The Old Bridge," by Thomas Addison Richards

Not a lot of info on Thomas Addison Richards, who was another landscape artist. His brother William Carey Richards sounds rather interesting though, "an artist and sometimes lecturer who linked fine art and science."

I also find it interesting to note that this bridge is almost universally portrayed in adaptations as a covered bridge. Maybe they just look spookier?

25:04 - "Brom Bones and Ichabod," by Emanuel Leutze

Oh hey, an artist you all might have heard of! Well, maybe not the artist himself, but one of his works. Emanuel Leutze was a German artist of the Düsseldorf school of painting, known primarily for his works depicting scenes from American history. By far, his most famous work is Washington Crossing the Delaware, depicting George Washington leading his troops across the Delaware River into New Jersey on Christmas night, 1776, to surprise a group of Hessian troops in what turned into the Battle of Trenton.

As for this illustration, I really like the way the Horseman is a spectral, background figure, almost invisible behind the much more solid-looking Ichabod. The title sort of sucks all the ambiguity out of the story, though.

25:04 - "Ichabod pursued by the headless horseman," by F. O. C. Darley

29:25 - It's rumored here that Ichabod survived his encounter with the Horseman, and fled the town to go on and become a Justice of the Ten Pound Court, which (according to this handy list of "Sleepy Hollow" vocabulary words, some of which I should probably also have noted) was a court that handled cases that involved up to ten British pounds.

30:32 - "Vignette-Postscript," by Henry Walker Herrick

This little postscript title illustration is by Henry Walker Herrick, who doesn't actually have a Wikipedia page (oh no, I have to do actual research, sort of!) It's a shame, because he sounds like a very interesting gentleman. According to this brief abstract of a paper from 1987, he taught at the New York School of Design for Women starting in 1853 and became a strong proponent of women's rights in art education. Some more information about him can be found in this biographical sketch from an 1896 book, Geneaology and History of Manchester, New Hampshire by George Franklyn Willey. Here, we learn that he worked for several years as a book engraver, carving illustrations onto the blocks that were used for printing books. He worked, in fact, largely on the designs of F. O. C. Darley. After focusing on his own work, it seems that his best-known work (and the one you'll almost exclusively find referencing him online) is a volume of illustrations from Aesop's Fables.

And that's it for "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"! Thanks for listening, and come back soon for a new book.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at ibiblio. No reading ahead, though!