Ichabod Crane

For Colonel Ichabod Crane, see Ichabod Crane (Colonel).

What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! by Frederick Simpson Coburn (1899). Ichabod Crane walks home after an evening listening to ghost stories

Ichabod Crane, Respectfully Dedicated to Washington Irving. by William J. Wilgus, artist chromolithograph, c. 1856

The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, by John Quidor, 1858

Will Rogers as Ichabod Crane and Lois Meredith as Katrina Van Tassel, in The Headless Horseman (1922)

Courtship In Sleepy Hollow, or Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel, 1868

Ichabod Crane is a fictional character and the protagonist in Washington Irving's short story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", first published in 1820.

Role in story

As described in the story, Ichabod Crane follows strict morals in the schoolroom, including the proverbial "Spare the rod and spoil the child"; outside the schoolroom, he is shown to have few morals and no motive but his own gratification. Despite being thin, he is capable of eating astonishingly large amounts of food and is constantly seeking to do so. In addition to this, he is excessively superstitious, often to the extent of believing every myth, legend, tall tale, etc. to be literally true. As a result, he is perpetually frightened by anything that reminds him of ghosts or demons.

A turning point in the story occurs when Ichabod becomes enamored of one Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a wealthy farmer named Baltus Van Tassel, who pays little attention to his daughter other than to be proud of her merits when they are praised. On account of both of her beauty and her father's wealth, which he is eager to inherit, Ichabod begins to court Katrina, who seems to respond in kind. This attracts the attention of the town rowdy, Abraham "Brom Bones" van Brunt, who also wants to marry Katrina and is challenged in this only by Ichabod. Despite Brom's efforts to humiliate or punish the schoolmaster, Ichabod remains steadfast, and neither contestant seems able to gain any advantage throughout this rivalry.

Later, both men are invited to a harvest festival party at Van Tassel's where Ichabod's social skills far outshine Brom's. After the party breaks up, Ichabod remains behind for "a tête-à-tête with the heiress", where it is supposed that he makes a proposal of marriage to Katrina but, according to the narrator, "Something, however ... must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chapfallen", meaning that his proposal is refused, allegedly because her sole purpose in courting him was either to test or to increase Brom's desire for her. Therefore Ichabod leaves the house "with the air of one who had been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady's heart."

During his journey home, Ichabod encounters another traveler, who is eventually revealed to be the legendary Headless Horseman; the ghost of a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball during the American Revolutionary War. Ichabod flees with the Horseman chasing after him, eventually crossing a bridge near the Dutch burial ground. Because the ghost is incapable of crossing this bridge, Ichabod assumes that he is safe. However, the Horseman throws his own severed head at Ichabod, knocking him from the back of his own horse and sending him "tumbling headlong into the dust". The next morning, Ichabod's hat is found abandoned, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin. Ichabod is never seen in Sleepy Hollow again, and is therefore presumed to have been spirited away by the Headless Horseman. Later, "an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit several years after, and from whom this account of the ghostly adventure was received" suggests that Ichabod had been frightened, both of the Horseman and of the anger of his (Ichabod's) current landlord, into leaving the town forever, later to become "a justice of the ten pound court" in "a distant part of the country." Katrina marries Brom, who is said "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always laughed heartily at the mention of the pumpkin", which events "led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell"; therefore, it can be assumed that he himself was the Horseman, whose legend he took of advantage of his rival.

In reality about Ichabod's fate, he returned to Connecticut without his horse.

Caleb Stegall suggests that "the most distinctive characteristic Irving gives Ichabod is that of a psalm singer," and that Ichabod Crane is the "most celebrated Covenanter in all of literature."

Adaptations in other media

• The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), directed by James Algar, Clyde Geronimi, and Jack Kinney, produced by Walt Disney Productions, and packaged with a companion 30-minute short "Mr. Toad" based on Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Probably the best-known version, as it ran for years as part of the television Halloween special Disney's Halloween Treat and considered one of the truest adaptations of the Irving story. This animated interpretation features Bing Crosby as the narrator and sole voice actor of the entire 30-minute piece and extends both the role of Ichabod Crane to make his (Crane's) singing that of a crooner instead of the nasal psalmodist described in the story and that of Brom Bones to include the latter as singer of the song about the Horseman's legend.
• A 1980 made-for-TV movie The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was filmed on NBC, in Utah. It starred Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane, directed by Henning Schellerup, produced by James L. Conway, and executive producer Charles Sellier.
• Ed Begley, Jr. starred as Ichabod Crane in an 1985 adaptation by Lan O'Kun for Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends directed by Edd Griles which also starred Beverly D'Angelo as Katrina, Tim Thomerson as Brom and Charles Durning.
• Constable Ichabod Crane serves as the protagonist in the 1999 film adaptation of Sleepy Hollow, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp. In this interpretation, he is a New York policeman with an interest in science, sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a string of grisly murders to prove the merits of his style of investigation after he argues against the police's current methods. As in the original story, his horse is named Gunpowder. Ichabod's most notable traits in the movie include an ahead-of-his-time liking for post-mortem examinations and scientific methods, as well as his being very quirky and skittish, as well as disgusted by death and blood, despite his occupation. His backstory is also explored: when he was seven his mother, an "innocent child of Nature" was "murdered to save her soul" by his father, "a Bible black tyrant behind a mask of righteousness" which led to a loss of faith for him. It is Ichabod who finally banishes the Hessian Headless Horseman (Christopher Walken) to Hell and sends Lady van Tassel (Miranda Richardson), the woman who has been controlling the undead rider, with him. Katrina Van Tassel (Christina Ricci) is seen at the end of the movie going back to New York with Ichabod, along with a boy who helped Ichabod in the investigation. Brom Bones, who at one point does disguise himself as the Horseman and throws a pumpkin at Ichabod, is killed by the real Horseman halfway in the film.
• In 1999, a telefilm entitled The Legend of Sleepy Hollow aired on Odyssey starring Brent Carver as Ichabod Crane. It was filmed in Montreal.
• The 1999 computer animated FOX TV special The Night of the Headless Horseman featured William H. Macy as the voice of Crane.
• The 2004 TV movie The Hollow centers on a high school student named Ian Cranston, a descendant of Ichabod Crane.
• Tom Mison plays Crane in Sleepy Hollow (2013), an American supernatural/police drama television series. The series is considered a "modern-day retelling" with Crane being a former professor of history at Oxford University prior to the American Revolution, he came to America with the British before switching sides and becoming a spy for the Colonials. Having beheaded the Horseman in 1781, he was brought back to life in modern times with the Horseman due to their blood mixing when they died.