The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

A popular storytelling technique in fiction from the 19th century is a first-person narrator relating a story that they have heard from someone else. This type of second-hand story is hearsay, or information that comes from a third-party source and cannot be verified, such as gossip or rumors. (Hearsay is also a legal term for evidence that is disallowed in court because it is unsubstantiated, but that is not the definition that is important here.)

On one hand, framing the story as having been told to the narrator by a witness or participant in its events gives the story an air of intimacy. Readers feel as if they are learning a secret, one that is only known by word of mouth. On the other hand, using hearsay as a narrative technique means that the narrator and the story are unreliable.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is narrated by “the Late Dietrich Knickerbocker,” who is a fictitious Dutch historian invented by Washington Irving. This scholarly narrator lends credence to the story at first, but as the story moves on, it becomes clear that Knickerbocker is retelling a story told to him by some other unnamed source. It should also be noted that Ichabod Crane’s story takes place 30 years before the Knickerbocker relates it, and it is likely the story has become exaggerated if not completely fictionalized over those 30 years.