Knjigice
Fairy tale · Classic fairy tales
Sleepy Hollow
The story of a schoolmaster who met the headless horseman
Also in: Speča dolina (Slovenian) · Ospalá dolina (Slovak)
Among wooded hills beside a wide river lies a little valley where everything is drowsy. The wind rustles more slowly there, the hens doze at midday, and the people love nothing better than a ghost story. They call it Sleepy Hollow. And every evening the same tale goes round: a headless horseman gallops down the road at night, looking for his lost head.
1
The schoolmaster of that valley was a long streak of a man named Ichabod Crane. He was so thin and so tall that it looked as if the wind could carry him off. His sleeves were too short, his shoes too big, and his appetite enormous — he ate as much as three men together. But best of all he loved ghost stories. And he believed every single one.
2
Ichabod knew every farm in the valley, and the finest of them all belonged to rich old Van Tassel. There lived Katrina, his only daughter — rosy, dark-haired and always laughing. Ichabod dreamed of marrying her and inheriting all those hens and all those pies. But Brom Bones had his eye on Katrina too: a broad-shouldered fellow with the fastest horse in the valley. He simply laughed at Ichabod.
3
In the autumn Van Tassel invited the whole valley to a great harvest party. The table groaned: roast chickens, honey cakes, apple pastries and pumpkin pies as tall as hats. Ichabod ate and ate. Then the fiddles struck up and he danced with Katrina so briskly that his long arms flew in every direction. Brom watched from the corner and gritted his teeth.
4
After supper the men gathered by the fire and told frightening tales. The most frightening was the one about the headless horseman. "He rides the valley every night," they whispered, "and whoever meets him must go with him over the bridge." Ichabod listened open-mouthed, his feet tucked tight under his stool. Outside, the wind rattled the windows.
5
At midnight Ichabod said goodnight and climbed onto a borrowed horse — an old bony plough-horse with a moth-eaten mane and one wild rolling eye. The road was dark and the moon was pale. Every branch creaked, every shadow stirred. Ichabod began to sing at the top of his voice to keep his courage up, but his voice shook more than the leaves.
6
By the old tree he saw something big and dark. It stood perfectly still. "Who's there?" called Ichabod. Nothing. Then the shadow moved: a rider in a black cloak, with no head on his shoulders and something round tucked under his arm. Ichabod's breath stopped. The horse snorted, and slowly they went on. The rider came after them.
7
Ichabod dug in his heels, and the old plough-horse leapt forward as if it were young again. Away they thundered in a cloud of dust. Ichabod's coat flapped like two dark wings, his spectacles slid to the end of his nose, and his hat flew off into the bushes. Behind him came the drumming — thud, thud, thud — closer and closer.
8
Below him the bridge shone in the moonlight. "If I get across, I'm safe!" gasped Ichabod. The horse clattered onto the planks. Ichabod glanced back — and just then the rider stood up in his stirrups and hurled that round thing after him. Something big hit him smack on the head. Ichabod flew into the grass, and the horse galloped off into the night.
9
In the morning they went looking for him. By the bridge they found his hat — and beside it a smashed pumpkin, broken into a thousand pieces. The horse had come home by itself and was calmly cropping grass. But Ichabod was nowhere. He never came back to the school or the farm. They say he left the valley that very night.
10
For years the valley told how the headless horseman had carried the schoolmaster away. Katrina married Brom the following spring. And whenever anyone mentioned a pumpkin, Brom burst out laughing — so hard he had to hold his sides. And everybody in the valley knew who had ridden without a head that night.
11The End
