The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: A Mythological Parody

Author(s): Marjorie W. Bruner

Source: College English, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Jan., 1964), pp. 274-283
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/373574
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 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:
A Mythological Parody
MARJORIEW. BRUNER
STUDIES OF Washington Irving's Legend
of Sleepy Hollow have already been
made showing the borrowings from Ro-
mantic German literature and from na-
tive American life and folk humor.1 This
present study attempts to show it to be
a rollicking parody of ancient Greek
myths and rites of Greek fertility cults,
a comic story of death and rebirth, fer-
tility and immortality.
A clue to this interpretation is given
by Irving himself when he speaks of
Brom Bones as having a Herculean
frame, and the messenger who invited
Ichabod to the Van Tassel's party as
wearing a cap of Mercury. From here
on Irving parodies the gods and god-
desses and the rites of their worship at
Eleusis in Greece.
Brom Bones, so nicknamed because
of his powers of limb, was a rustic
Hercules, of whose feats of skill and
strength the whole countryside well
knew. He was arrogant, boastful, had the
temper of a lion, enjoyed fighting in
single combat, and played pranks on un-
suspecting persons like his godly pro-
totype. While Hercules wore a lion's
skin, which he took as a trophy after
one of his labors, BromnBones "xvas dis-
tinguished by a fur cap, surmounted
with a flaunting fox's tail," which was
identified at a distance by the country
'W. A. Reichart, JCVashington Irving and
Germany (Ann Arbor, 1957) and D. G. Hoff-
man, Form and Fable in American Literature
(New York, 1961).
After 25 years' leave from the classroom to
rear a family, Mrs. Brzuner has returned to
teaching at Carthage College (Kenosha, Wise.),
where she is an assistant professor of English
in American literature.
274
people. Hercules wrestled with Ache-
loos, a river god, for the hand of
Deianira; Brom Bones competed with
Ichabod for the favor of Katrina Van
Tassel, but how?-by playing pranks on
Ichabod at the schoolhouse and by en-
gaging in the frightening ride through
the dark woods. In the end both Her-
cules and Brom won their girls whom
they married and lived with for some
time. Hercules made a visit to the under-
world on a mission and made a success-
ful return to his land. So did Brom;
his trip to the underworld was his ride
through the forest as the headless horse-
man, and his mission was to frighten
Ichabod out of the neighborhood. On
the completion of his mission, Brom, like
Hercules, returned to his community,
married Katrina, and became a respected
landholder.
Katrina Van Tassel, as her name in-
dicates, corresponds to the corn goddess,
Demeter, for everything concerning her
and surrounding her suggests ripeness
and fertility.' Katrina was plump and
rosy-cheeked and she wore much yellow
(Demeter's color). The whole Van
Tassel farm is a symbol of fertility, for
the barn seemed to Ichabod to be burst-
ing forth with farm treasures; in the
barnyard were "rows of pigeons,"
"troops of suckling pigs," "a squadron
of snowy geese," "regiments of turkeys
and guinea fowls." Around the barn-
yard were "fat meadow-lands," "rich
fields of wheat, rye, buckwheat and
Indian corn," all symbols of Demeter,
2Sir James George Frazer, The New Golden
Bough, ed. by T. H. Gaster (New York, 1961),
pp. 199 f.
 SLEEPY HOLLOW: MYTHOLOGICAL
and "orchards burthened with ruddy
fruit." Inside the house were rows of
resplendent pewter, treasure of old sil-
ver and china, strings of dried apples and
peaches and ears of Indian corn. Even
similes used in connection with Katrina
are those of food: Ichabod looked on
her as a tempting morsel, and his dream
of achieving her hand looked to him as
easy as "a man would carve his way to
the center of a Christmas pie."
The messenger who brought to Icha-
bod the invitation to the Van Tassel
party was "a negro in tow-cloth jacket
and trowrsers, a round-crowned frag-
ment of a hat, like the cap of Mercury,
and mounted on the back of a ragged,
wild, half-broken colt which he man-
aged with a rope by way of a halter."
He is a comic figure of Mercury who
vas not only the messenger of the gods,
but who also acted as guide for way-
farers to the underworld. Because of this
latter association, Mercury's symbolic
color was black. All of the Olympian
gods are represented in mythology as
white-skinned, but in this parody of the
gods, Irving uses Mercury's association
with black and death to make his mes-
senger a Negro.
Is Ichabod too a parody of a god? He
seems to hold two positions in this
comedy of Greek mythology. He is a
parody of the river god, Acheloos, who
struggled wvithHercules, and at the same
time he is a burlesque of a worshipper
of one of the Greek Mysteries.
As a parody of a river god, Ichabod is
quite plainly connected with water by his
last name of Crane and his personal de-
scription which is made in terms of water
and bird images. His appearance is that
of a water bird: tall, lanky, lean with
narrow shoulders, long arms and legs,
feet like shovels, loosely-knit frame,
small head, large green, glassy eyes, a
capacious swallow, and a long snipe (also
a water bird) nose similar to a beak. His
head turned like a weathercock; he
looked like a scarecrow; and when he
PARODY 279
rode Gunpowder his arms "flapped like
a pair of wings," and his elbows "stuck
out like grasshoppers."
Ichabod's nature was that of a quiet
river: "wonderfully gentle and ingratiat-
ing," "a happy mixture of pliability and
perseverance." He made his advances to
Katrina "in a quiet and gently insinuating
manner."
As a river was a major means of com-
munication in the early days, so Ichabod
was "a traveling gazette," bringing gossip
from house to house. Like some meander-
ing rivers he had no permanent home;
he lived successively a week at a time
at the houses of his students. He is identi-
fied with water also when the reader is
told that his schoolhouse stood by a
brook, his hours of leisure were spent
beside a brook or stream or swamp. He
sauntered with girls along banks of an
adjacent mill-pond, and he courted Ka-
trina beside a spring. Even his school-
house fastening "borrowed from the
mystery of the eel-pot."
Ichabod is also compared to a river
at flood tide which appears to eat up the
land as it advances, when Irving says that
Ichabod "was a huge feeder, and though
lank, had the dilating powers of an ana-
conda." Katrina, "a tempting morsel,"
found favor with Ichabod, but his feel-
ings for her were prompted more by de-
sire for her possessions than for herself,
for "the pedagogue's mouth watered as
he looked upon this sumptuous promise
of luxurious winter fare. ... As the en-
raptured Ichabod fancied all this, and
as he rolled his great green eyes over the
fat meadow-lands . . . his heart yearned
after the damsel vho was to inherit
these domains" and his imagination roved
to how he would turn all this to cash
and move to Kentucky or some other
new region, just as a river at flood tide,
having devoured the land before it,
would cut new channels for its course.
Finally, Irving seems to point to Icha-
bod's stature as a comic god when he
establishes the social importance of the
280 COLLEGE ENGLISH

schoolmaster in the community. "The ally with nmidnightworship of a mysteri-

schoolmaster is generally a man of some ous, awful, supernatural god involving
importance in the female circle of rural music, frenzied dancing, and the behold-
neighborhoods . . . an idle gentlenmanlike ing of strange and frightful dramas
personage, of vastly superior taste and through which the initiate xvould attain
accomplishments to the rough country union with the god. The theme of fer-
swains." "The more bashful country tility, so important in the Greek Mys-
bumpkins" envied "his superior elegance teries, is expressed by Irving in the food
and address." In the schoolroom he wras inlages and in the long, glowing descrip-
"enthroned" in his "literary realm," "in tions of the abundance of nature at the
his hand swayed a ferule, a scepter of Van Tassel home and countryside
despotic power." His mastery of Cotton around, until the story becomes itself
Mather's History of New England a paean to the corn goddess, Demeter,
Witchcraft, his delight in listening to whose worship centered at Eleusis. Icha-
supernatural tales, and his whole-hearted bod's "only study was how to gain the
belief generally in the supernatural points affections of the peerless daughter of
also to his own identification with a su- Van Tassel," which in a parody of Greek
pernatural god. Ichabod existed on a Mystery worship compares to the wor-
social and intellectual plane above his shipper's desire to attain union w^iththe
roistering rival, Brom Bones, just as goddess.
Acheloos, a lesser divinity, was on a The action of the story begins while
spiritual plane above Hercules, the semi- a buzzing stillness reigned in the school-
mortal hero of brawn. room; a Negro appeared with an invita-
Many more details of comparison can tion to attend a frolic that evening at the
be found betwveenIchabod and Acheloos, Van Tassel's. As the rites at Eleusis
whose story of the struggle against Her- held at night, were open only to initiates,
cules is to be found in Ovid's Metainor- Ichabod too needed an invitation to the
phoses (Book IX). In addition to these Van Tassel evening party.
parodies of the individual characters of "Ichabod spent an extra half hour at
the mythological gods, the theme of The his toilet, brushing and furbishing up his
Legend of Sleepy Hollow itself becomes 1)est and indeed only suit of rusty black
a parody of the rituals of the Greek and arranging his looks by a bit of brok-
Mysteries atEleusis and Dionysos and en looking-glass." Ichabod, of course, is
their accompanying symbolic trips to going courting, but the initiates too un-
the underworld. derwent a purification ceremony, and
Like a musical composer who an- then donned garments of black. On his
nounces his theme in the opening of his way to Katrina's house he noticed na-
symphony, Washington Irving an- ture's abundance. "His eye, ever open to
nounced his by quoting from the Castle every symptom of culinary abundance,
of Indolence, and expanded this dream- beheld a vast store of apples" in "oppres-
like otherworld theme by the use of sive opulence on the trees," "great fields
Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, "drowsy, of Indian corn" with yellow pumpkins
dreamy influence," "bewitched," "under lying beneath, buckwheat fields "breath-
sway of some wvitching power," "con- ing the odor of the bee-hive." All these
tinual reverie," "trances and visions," are symbols pertaining to the fertility
"see strange sights," "hear music and gods, and were represented in abundance
voices in the air," and so on. These are, along the processional way to the wor-
it is recognized, characteristic details ship and at the shrines of the gods.
often used in Romantic novels, but they He arrived at "the castle of the Heer
are also a part of the story dealing basic- Van Tassel" (the shrine) which he
 SLEEPY HOLLOW: MYTHOLOGICAL
found "thronged with the pride and the
flowxverof the adjacent country" (other
worshippers). Brom Bones was present
the whole evening, just as Hercules wvas
present also as an initiate of the rites of
Eleusis. Ichabod entered the state parlor
of the mansion wvhereinthe food Mvaslaid
out: cakes of all kinds including honey
cakes, halm anlmongother dishes, and the
"motherly teapot." It is knouwnthat the
w orshippers at Eleusis ate before the
ceremonv a feast of honev cakes and
roast pork and drank kykeon, a kind of
mint tea. Van Tassel, as befitted his
name, was the officiating priest of this
worship of a corn goddess, who "moved
about anmonghis guests uwith a face di-
lated with content and good humor,
round and jolly as a harvest moon. His
hospitable attentions were brief, but ex-
pressive, being confined to a shake of the
hand, a slap on the shoulder, a loud
laugh, and a pressing invitation to 'fall
to and help themselves.' "
Music for dancing followed the feast-
ing. Ichabod's comic dancing is described
in terms of the mad, frenzied dancing
of the devotees of Dionvsos: "Not a
limb, not a fiber about him wvasidle; and
to have seen his loosely-hung frame in
full motion and clattering about the
room, you would have thought St. Vitus
himself, that blessed patron of the dance,
was figuring before you in person."
After the dance Ichabod joined "a
knot of sager folk" on the piazza, gossip-
ing over former times and drawing out
long stories about the war, then going
into tales of ghosts and apparitions.
These tales had much to do with death,
funeral trains, xr ailings, dark glens,
shrieks, storms, and the headless horse-
man w^ho tethered his horse among the
graves in the churchyard. "All these
tales, told in that drowsy undertone with
which men talk in the dark . . . sank deep
in the mind of Ichabod." This emotional
build-up of poor Ichabod relates to the
drama played before the Eleusinian initi-
PARODY 281
ates to build up their emotions for the
final dramatic moment.
Then the revel broke up, the farmers
went home, but Ichabod lingered wvith
Katrina. "What passed at this interview
I wvill not pretend to say, for in fact I
do not know. Let it suffice to say, Icha-
bod stole forth with the air of one who
had been sacking a hen-roost rather than
a fair lady's heart." He left "heavy-
hearted and crestfallen." At the end of
the first part of the Eleusinian rites, the
crowds dispersed and only the year-old
initiates could stav to participate. These
second rites were highly secret, but the
revelation affected the initiate enmotional-
ly and probably involved a vision of
death. Certainly Katrina's revelation to
Ichabod had been death to his high hope
of attaining union with her and being
master of her lands.
Ichabod's journey through the dark
woods at midnight is equivalent to the
Eleusinian's symbolical journey to Hades,
the climax of the rite which took place
at midnight. Ichabod approached the
tree on which Major Andre, a British
spy, had been hanged by the Americans
during the Revolutionary War. To the
Greeks, Dionysos was known as a tree
spirit and a festival w^asfounded in one
part of Greece in which little images
hung by nooses from trees were carried
by the celebrants. These images became
a fairly common part of the wvorshipof
Dionysos, god of wine and the fruited
tree.
Ichabod came to a haunted brook
over which was a bridge. "To pass this
bridge w^as the severest trial," for the
brook represents the river Styx xvhich
separated the lands of the living and the
dead and wvas heavily guarded. Here
Ichabod met a black horse and black rid-
er also apparently guarding the stream.
Ichabod called out, "WVhoare you?" but
he received no answer. Then he discov-
ered the rider xvas headless. Egyptian
mythology depicts Isis as a headless god-
dess who personifies the dead. It is her
282 COLLEGE ENGLISH

duty to introduce the dead to Osiris and Brom Bones, who participated in the
she is present at Osiris' judgment of the party at the Van Tassels' in the same
dead. Like Ichabod's headless horseman way that Hercules was initiated at Eleus-
who supposedly lost his head in battle, is before going to the underworld and
she lost her head during a battle between who as the headless horseman rode the
Seth and Horus. The Greek and Egyp- death-like forest, did not undergo death
tian worlds borrowed much from each or rebirth (nor did Hercules) but he re-
other by way of Crete and Alexandria, turned safely to Tarrytown where he
so that Isis was well-known to Greeks. married Katrina and became master of
Then began Ichabod's wild ride which her lands. Hercules, having accomplished
reminds one of the pursuit of the Furies his last labor safely, returned to the
of Greek tragedy driving their victim to upper world, married Deianira, and even-
his destiny. Finally Ichabod saw a brook. tually became a god.
"If I can but reach that bridge," thought How did Irving know of these rites
Ichabod, "I am safe. . . . He thundered at Eleusis and Dionysos which were open
over the resounding planks; he gained only to initiates and were rarely hinted
the opposite side." This brook is a mi- at in classical writings? Some details are
nuscule representation of the river Lethe, found in Livy (Fourth Decade, Book
the river of forgetfulness, in which the IX), an author whom we are told Irving
Greeks believed the new souls must wash read.3 We know also that Irving was
themselves before leaving the land of the in Paris in 1805 when a book was pub-
dead and being reborn. Ichabod saw the lished by Jacques-Antoine Dulaure4
goblin rise to hurl the pumpkin head at which created much criticism in the
him; but too late. "It encountered his press because it purported to show that
cranium with a tremendous crash." If the Christian rituals and customs had
one considers the long snipe nose as well their origins in the cults of primitive
as the long lean figure of Ichabod to be ages. Irving, being an avid newspaper
a male phallic symbol, and the pumpkin reader, probably read the articles in-
to be the female mullos, this crash could volved in this controversy which filled
be considered the moment of conception the Parisian newspapers, and may even
in this tale of death and rebirth. Ichabod have obtained a copy of the book, so
tumbled into the dust and was possibly that details of the cults welled up in his
unconscious for a short time from the memory when he began to write Sleepy
shock (would this represent gestation?), Hollow a few years later.
after which he picked himself up and We must not forget too, that the
walked off to other parts leaving behind figures of Hercules and other classical
him all the paraphernalia of his earlier heroes were well known to Renaissance
existence at Sleepy Hollow. An old and Classical writers and artists in Eu-
farmer visiting New York brought back rope3 and that this influence was on the
news that Ichabod was living in a dis- wane in Irving's period. By parodying
tant part of the country; he had "kept these heroes Irving was helping to bury
school and studied law at the same time; a subject matter that had been popular
had been admitted to the bar, turned too long.
politician, electioneered, written for the
newspaper and finally had been made a 3Pierre Irving, Life and Letters of Washing-
justice of the Ten Pound Court." Icha- ton Irving, (New York, 1883), Vol. I, p. 12.
bod had been reborn into a new life; he 4Jacques-Antoine Dulaure, The Gods of Gen-
had sloughed off his old life completely, eration, trans. by A.F.N. (New York, 1933), p.
xxi.
even to the point of changing profes- 'E. M. Waith, The Herculean Hero (New
sions. York, 1962).
 OLD TIMES ON THE
It is possible that Irving's contempo-
raries recognized his classical borrowings,
although none of them has pointed these
out. A writer in Blacknwood'sMagazine
(1825) wrote: "We have no patience
with such a man as Washington Irving.
We cannot keep our temper when we
catch him pilfering the materials of other
men; uworking up old stories." These
italics are mine; the whole quotation was
originally used to point out Irving's bor-
rowing of the wild ride from Burger's
Leonore. Irving's reply to his critics was
that he considered popular traditions fair
foundations for authors of fiction to
build on, and his comic use of classic
Old Times on the Mississippi
as an Initiation Story
BARRISSMILLS
IT 1S A COniMMONPLACEof criticism that
Mark Twain was a great "natural" writ-
er untroubled by a concern for form.
It is his main weakness but also a part
of his rather boyish charm as a writer,
that he seems not only to have been
incapable of the sustained artistic con-
centration necessary to produce "mas-
terpieces," but also to have been almost
unable to tell his best writing from his
worst. Few writers of comparable tal-
ent have left so many unfinished proj-
ects behind, and there is reason to
believe that still other false starts were
abandoned and destroyed when the sud-
den seizures of impulse wore themselves
out or the bursts of scribbling seemed
to be leading nowhere. The various at-
Professor Mills teaches American literature
and creative writing at Purdue. He is the author particular works in which they appear.
of two collections of poems, The Black and
White Geometry and Parvenus & Ancestors.
The Idylls of Theokritos: A Verse Translation
was published in 1963.
MISSISSIPPI 283
mythology in the Legend of Sleepy Hol-
low, as well as his parody of the lliad
in the battle between the Dutch and
Swedes in Knickerbocker's History of
New York would seem to indicate that
he included the classics as fair founda-
tions for stories too.
Whatever classical sources Irving used
for his Legend of Sleepy Hollow Irving's
comedy is intensfied through his use of
mythological and religious parallels.
What was once serious and spiritually
elevating to the Greeks has become by
contrast and exaggeration through Irv-
ing's genius something of rollicking
mirth to be enjoyed for all time.
tempts, over many years and with sev-
eral abandonments and new beginnings,
to complete the story we now know as
The Mysterious Stranger is a striking
example, thoroughly documented by
John S. Tuckey's recent study of the
manuscripts in Mark Twain and Little
Satan.
Even The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, his one great book, is badly marred
by its final chapters, written in the
vein of boyish humor more appropriate
to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and
not even the authority of T. S. Eliot's
special pleading can hide the fact. Hence
old Mark Twain hands tend to make
their own anthologies of the "good"
passages in his rather considerable writ-
ings, without much regard to the
An exception to this almost universal
failure of Mark Twain to attain really
effective "form" is Old Times on the