Ichabod Crane

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

Ichabod comes from the biblical name of the grandson of Eli the High Priest and son of Phinehas. Irving might have borrowed the name from that of Ichabod Crane, a colonel in the US Army during the War of 1812 whom he had met in 1814 in Sackets Harbor, New York.

According to a notation by Irving, the character of Ichabod Crane was based on a schoolmaster named Jesse Merwin, whom Irving became friends with in Kinderhook, New York, in 1809. According to an 1894 article in The New York Times, "it [was] claimed by many that Samuel Youngs was the original from whom Irving drew his character of Ichabod Crane".

Irving's characters drive the story and are most memorable because of his detail in describing each. He says of Ichabod Crane (the main character), '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.' According to Irving, Ichabod looks like a goofy, old scarecrow who has escaped the cornfield. Ichabod Crane is a school teacher with very little money, and as a result, the ladies of the town take care to feed him in the evenings, during which he is happy to listen to their tales about supernatural events in the settlement. Ichabod is said to have carried a copy of Cotton Mather's History of New England Witchcraft, which he firmly believes. He was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled. He administered justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burden off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he instructed. When school hours were over, he was even the companion and playmate of the larger boys; and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters, or good housewives for mothers, noted for the comforts of the cupboard. With these he lived successively a week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.

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