Was The Headless Horseman Legend Original Or Made Up For "Sleepy Hollow"?

Question

I know that Washington Irving mentioned the story about the headless horsemen in the "Sleepy Hollow" book.

Was that a legend already and he just decided to incorporate it into the story or did he totally make up the headless horseman just for the book?

Answer 1

Many legends are very old. Man's fear causes him to create explanations to every aspect of life. The headless daemon has been in our mythology for centuries, so there is little that is not adapted from something in the past.Today we have little space men. In the past it was leprechauns, or little people, or succubi, and ghosts,so he used a contemporary model to write a very good story.

Answer 2

The headless horse men really goes back to ancient times but headless men walking around goes back even further... So Washington Irving talking about a headless horsemen was nothing new........ But it is a great story never the less.......

Answer 3

Washington Irving's story is entirely from his own mind, although inspired by the real Sleepy Hollow/Tarrytown, but the legend of headless horseman characters is not original to Irving.

The Irish Dullahan is an example:

http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/AC...

(The association of the name Crom Dubh with Crom Cruach is not as clear as this article implies)

http://www.olddutchburyingground.org/sle...

Answer 4

It was legend long before the book.

The legend of the Headless Horseman begins in a town near North Tarrytown, New York named Sleepy Hollow. The Horseman was supposedly a Hessian soldier of unknown rank; one of many such hired to suppress the American Revolutionary War. During the war, the Horseman was one of 548 Hessians killed in a battle for Chatterton Hill, wherein his head was severed by a cannonball. He was buried in a graveyard outside an Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. Thereafter he appears as a ghost, who presents to nightly travelers an actual danger (rather than the largely harmless fright produced by the majority of ghosts), presumably of decapitation. He carries his own head on his person or that of his horse and uses it as a weapon, though he also carries a sword. In Sleepy Hollow, a Tim Burton film, the Horseman is seen to also be skilled with an axe.