"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" represents Washington Irving's second comic masterpiece, a ghostly tale about things that go bump in the night. The specter in question here is the mysterious Headless Horseman, said to be a Hessian trooper who lost his head in a nearby battle. Each night he roams the countryside in search of it. The unlikely hero in this tale is Ichabod Crane, an itinerant schoolmaster, whose name suits him perfectly... Written while Irving was living abroad in Birmingham, England, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was first published in 1819.