Early American Fantasy: Rip Van Winkle (1819) & The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) by Washington Irving

Chances are that you, dear reader, have heard of these fairy tales. Maybe you’ve seen some adaptation, like the Tim Burton film, or read or saw some variant of these tales as a child, or have a vague idea what the stories are about through cultural osmosis. 

The original stories were written not by the brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen but by the American short story writer Washington Irving in the early 1800s. Irving grew up in New York State and became enamoured with the history of early Dutch settlers in the region. Just like H.P. Lovecraft seemed to have a fascination for New England to set their tales in, Irving was drawn to the Catskill Mountains and its beautiful colors at dawn and dusk, and the customs and ghost stories of the Dutch in the region.

Irving invented a fake Dutch historian with the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, placed missing person advertisements in the New York Evening Post to let people think that he might actually have existed, with success, and then published a satirical history of New York in Knickerbocker’s name. The book became a success and many years later, Knickerbocker became a nickname for Manhattanites and the official name of a New York basketball team. That was the start of Irving’s career. A few years after this publication, Irving traveled to England and stayed there for the next 17 years. There, his friend Sir Walter Scott convinced him that the Dutch and German folk tales are a treasure trove of storytelling and that he should write stories about them. And so we get to Rip van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow. Irving, however, chose to put these stories back in New York, in his beloved Kaaterskill (Catskill) mountains among the Dutch and German descendants.

Irving became one of the founding fathers of the American short story tradition, an honour that is usually given to Edgar Allan Poe, but Irving was there before him. Irving’s innovation was that he wrote his stories in the vernacular of common people and simply aimed to entertain, instead of presenting a moral. Not everyone was impressed at the time, but his impact is undeniable. 

Rip Van Winkle (1819)

Irving’s writing in this short story is very easy to read for a modern reader, because of his avoidance of dignified, didactic language. Hugely entertaining, this story is a joy. Introduced by fake historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, Rip van Winkle, old Rip, is quite the character. He is a hen-pecked husband, married to a Dame van Winkle who is notorious for her bad moods. Rip being a very gentle fellow and loved all around, often ran from home with his loyal dog Wolf to wander the mountains and help out other people instead of working his own plot of land. Irving sets the story in some kind of Hobbit village, including for example an inn-keeper who sits on his porch all day smoking a pipe, and you can tell the time of day by his position out of the sun and interpret his opinions by the intensity of his pipe puffing. 

One day, Rip follows a fellow with a keg of beer into the mountains where he meets some kind of dwarves that remind Rip of a Flemish painting (and I am not sure whether Irving refers to an existing painting) and they play nine-pin bowling in a ravine while drinking Dutch beer. Rip joins in and falls into a deep sleep, only to wake up 20 years later. It turns out that Rip missed the American Revolution.

Poor Rip. The world passed him by, and Rip Junior is now the only Rip people know.  One comfort is that is wife burst a blood vessel in a fit of passion. The story is quickly wrapped up with a happy end and Prof. Knickerbocker assures us that it is authentic. It ends with traveling notes by Knickerbocker who relates that an old squaw spirit haunted the mountains, and the frequent thunder is the rolling of nine-pin bowling by old Dutch spirits. I really enjoyed it.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820)

A tale found among the papers of that cranky old historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a darker and dreamier tale than Rip Van Winkle. A decidedly gothic tale and a precursor to stories such as Arthur Machen would write them, but also with a sense of humor. Set in a valley along the Hudson River, populated by Dutch settlers, Sleepy Hollow is a bewitched place where people walk about in a trance, daydream and hold many beliefs and superstitions. The place is haunted by a Headless Horseman who rushes about at night. Purportedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper, a German soldier hired by the British to fight in the American Revolution.

Irving describes the main character, the schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, as someone coming straight out of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, with lanky limbs, long pointy nose and big ears like a scarecrow. It’s no surprise that Tim Burton felt inspired by this tale. When the lanky schoolmaster falls in love with a woman, that is when his world turns topsy-turvy. It takes a bloody long time for the story to start, though. First Irving describes Crane in much detail, then he describes the farm of the woman he falls in love with, Katrina van Tassel, in great detail. You see, Ichabod Crane isn’t such a good guy, actually. He’s bit creepy. When he looks at the pigs and chickens of his love’s father’s farm, all he sees is sumptuous meals and richness. He ingratiated himself with the women of the village, follows students home to see their pretty sisters and has a plan to marry into wealth. But Ichabod has to contend with the rough town hero Brom van Brunt, who is like the Gaston figure from The Beauty and the Beast. 

I am pleasantly surprised by how quirky and silly these stories are, but Irving inventing a fake professor named Knickerbocker should have been a hint to that effect. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was a bit too descriptive for my taste, unnecessarily so and that’s where its age begins to shine through, but otherwise these stories are very entertaining. And I think that Irving did a service in reconnecting the north-eastern US with a history of early Dutch colonisation and ancient folk tales.