The Legend
Ichabod Crane
The Connecticut schoolmaster at the center of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. How Irving draws him, what he wants from Katrina Van Tassel and her father’s farm, and what the story does and does not say about his end.
Who is Ichabod Crane?
Ichabod Crane is the schoolmaster in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820). He comes from Connecticut, teaches the valley’s children, and courts Katrina Van Tassel, a rich Dutch farmer’s only child. Riding home from her father’s party, he is chased by the Headless Horseman to the church bridge and is never seen in Sleepy Hollow again.
Who he is
Washington Irving sets Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow some thirty years before the telling of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He is a native of Connecticut, a state that Irving says sends out country schoolmasters by the legion. He has come to teach the children of the valley. The school pays little, so he boards a week at a time with the farmers whose children he teaches. He is a huge feeder, with what Irving calls “the dilating powers of an anaconda.”
How Irving draws him
He is tall and very thin, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, and feet like shovels. His head is small and flat on top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes and a long snipe nose. Seen on a hill in the wind, Irving writes, he could be taken for “some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.” Inside he is shrewd in small things and credulous in large ones. He believes every ghost story the old Dutch wives tell, and the walk home afterward terrifies him.
What he wants
He wants Katrina Van Tassel, and he wants what comes with her. She is eighteen, the only child of Baltus Van Tassel, and the farm is rich: full barns, fat pigs, orchards heavy with fruit. Irving shows Ichabod looking at it all and seeing dinner, then cash: the land sold and the money put into wild tracts out west. Between him and her stands Brom Bones, the hero of the country round, who courted her first. Ichabod avoids a fight and visits as the singing master instead.
What happens to him
On a fine autumn afternoon he rides to the Van Tassels’ party on Gunpowder, a horse borrowed from Hans Van Ripper, the farmer he boards with. He dances with Katrina and hears the ghost stories on the porch. Then he stays behind to speak with her alone. Irving does not say what passed between them, only that Ichabod comes out desolate and leaves at once. On the dark road home a huge rider falls in beside him and will not speak. Against the sky the rider has no head. Ichabod runs for the church bridge and gets across. The rider throws his head, and Ichabod is knocked into the dust.
The open ending
The next morning Gunpowder is found at his master’s gate without a saddle. The searchers find the trampled saddle, hoof tracks to the bridge and, beyond it, his hat and a shattered pumpkin. No body is found. The village decides that “Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian.” Irving then gives a second account. Years later an old farmer reports that Ichabod is alive. He left for fear of the goblin and of Hans Van Ripper, and from shame at being dismissed by Katrina. He studied law, turned politician and became a justice of the Ten Pound Court. The old wives still say he was spirited away. Irving does not choose.
In Irving’s words
Irving, on the look of Ichabod Crane.
Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 1820. The voice reading Irving in the films was designed for Sleepy Hollow with ElevenLabs. It is not a recording of any person. The whole story is free to read.
The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, 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 weather-cock 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.
On Roblox
In the game
In The Sleepy Hollow Experience the run for the bridge is yours. By day you cover the bridge: planks from the sawpit, a bay at a time, before nightfall. At nightfall the bell rings and the Headless Horseman rides, whether you play alone or with friends. Reach the covered bridge and you are safe. Leave it open and nowhere is. Ichabod’s borrowed horse is in the village: old Gunpowder waits at the inn. Every night you survive is kept on your name. The game is coming to Roblox.
Keep reading
The questions beside this one.
Asked
What people ask about Ichabod Crane
Connecticut. Irving calls it a state that sends out legions of frontier woodsmen and country schoolmasters, and Ichabod is one of the schoolmasters.
Tall and very thin, with long arms and legs, big ears, green glassy eyes and a long snipe nose. Irving says that on a windy hill he could be taken for a scarecrow that had left its cornfield.
Irving does not say. No body is found in the brook, and the village decides the Galloping Hessian carried him off. Years later an old farmer reports that Ichabod is alive and has become a justice of the Ten Pound Court.
No. Irving does not tell us what she said to him after the party, only that he came out looking desolate; the later report says she had dismissed him. Brom Bones marries her soon after Ichabod disappears.
Gunpowder. He is an old, broken-down plow-horse borrowed from Hans Van Ripper, the farmer Ichabod is boarding with, and Irving says there is still a devil in him.
On Roblox
The bell rings at nightfall.
Free to play. Nothing to buy right now. Alone or with friends.
Maturity: Mild
Violence (Repeated/Mild). Shown as Roblox shows it.
Ages 16+ for now
Roblox opens a new experience to age-checked players first. The Parents page has the detail.
5 badges
Every night you survive is kept on your name.