Happy Halloween Week: Tarry Town

 

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk, hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind.

 

If you’ve ever read Washington Irving’s much-beloved short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” I think my writing style becomes self-evident. It has always been, and will doubtless always be, my favorite work of fiction. As a very little girl, I fell in love with the story itself, thanks in large part to Bing Crosby and the animated Disney featurette, which is not only adorable, but lovingly faithful, and, of course, exquisitely narrated. Save the musical numbers, almost all the audio is a straight-up recitation of the text.

As for the text itself, I quickly fell in love with it as well, when I was old enough to read it. Irving liked words. Scratch that: he loved them. His joy for language leaps off the page, and it’s clear, upon reading any of his work, that the telling was as much if not more fun than the plot of a story. All of his stories are, in fact, rather simple; it’s the execution of them, their onion layers, their asides, their backstories, that make them most interesting.

Given it’s baked into my imagination, I’ve found myself wondering, this Halloween season more than those previous, if I was always destined to be a verbose and elaborative writer, that it was some latent instinct with regard to storytelling, even in my earliest, kindergarten attempts, and if that’s why I’ve always loved Irving. Or if my obsession with this story from an early age shaped the way I would eventually write as an adult. Bit of a chicken and egg situation, honestly, and I may never know the answer.

In any event, this is my annual “I love Sleepy Hollow” post. And speaking of: though I generally dislike film adaptations of books, and I especially don’t like creative license being taken too far, Tim Burton’s 1999 film Sleepy Hollow is absolutely perfect, and also the perfect Halloween watch. I’m not even a Burton fan, but the way he managed to capture the vibe, and even a few frame-for-frame shots from the animated short, and spin them into something darker, truer, and more sinister, in which Christopher Walken plays the Horseman, and it’s absurd, but it’s awesome…it’s a feat, let me tell you. The musical score, the sets, the coloring, and, most especially, the grisly practical effects, outshine most modern movies. And the riding! The horse is gorgeous, and whoever’s riding him did a beautiful job.

Happy Halloween, fellow pedagogues.

In one part of the road leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses’ hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin.

~*~

The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means.