If it's been a long time (or, like me, since never) since you've read the short story about the awkward, but lively schoolmaster Ichabod, his infatuation with one Katrina Van Tassel, his rivalry with the strapping Brom Bones for the affections of Katrina, and the looming specter of the legend of the Headless Horseman, I recommend you take an hour and read the story, especially in the Halloween season. It's funny and even scary, and the writing is great. Beyond Irving's penchant for great names (Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones), I loved his use of words completely new to me, words that should be in everyone's vocabulary, including varlet (a knavish person; rascal), rantipole (a wild, romping young person), and ferule (a rod, cane, or flat piece of wood for punishing children, esp. by striking them on the hand [ah, the teacher in me thinks of all those gum-chewers I taught and what use I could have made of a good ferule]). He also uses, a couple of times, the word con as a verb, meaning "to learn; study; peruse or examine carefully"--a meaning of the word I never knew. Thanks for the edification, Mr. Irving. He also uses the familiar expressions "through thick and thin" and "bend but not break," which got me thinking about where those phrases came from. Well, extensive web-searching informed me that "through thick and thin" is a very old English phrase, but I couldn't find anything on "bend but not break" except a load of references to modern day football teams whose defenses' do a lot of bending but not breaking. Could Irving have been the one to coin the phrase? I don't know, but the thought intrigues me.
Anyway, poor Ichabod's iPod, the most played songs:
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry-Hank Williams: Ichabod is a rather lonely man, and he spends a good deal of his life walking at night through woods, which only feeds his active, supernatural-leaning imagination: "...as he wended his way, by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination: the moan of the whippoorwill..."
Mystic Eyes-Them: Van Morrison's great, paranoid, noisy, frenetic stomper to further spook Ichabod on his nightly rambles.
My Mind's Eye-The Small Faces: Just read this sumptuous paragraph about Ichabod's imagination and his prodigious love of food: "The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind's eye, he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running
about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages; and even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living." Good God, a "decent competency of onion sauce"--brilliance. To think what Ichabod would have made of bacon, covered in chocolate!, is mind-boggling.
Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)-The Temptations: Not only for the terrors and the culinary feasts he conjures, but for the life of the lord of the country manor he envisions once he can successfully woo Katrina.
Hold Your Head Up-Argent: Obviously.
St. Vitus Dance-Bauhaus: Louis Jordan's tune of the same name is on the iPod as well, but this protypical Goth rocker is more perfect for the man who loved to dance, awkwardness be damned. "Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought St. Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person."
Trampled Under Foot-Led Zeppelin: There it is, 150 some odd years before Jimmy Page and company wrote the song: "But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these sheltered, long-settled retreats; but are trampled under foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places."
Who Are You-The Who: What better song to course through Ichabod's head while he's riding through the woods, pursued by that figure on the steed?
Where Is My Mind?-The Pixies: Followed by this one.
No More Hot Dogs-Hasil Adkins: Not just because it's the best song about decapitation. Not just because it mocks somebody, like Ichabod, who loves to eat, but that laugh! Is that not Brom Bones himself chuckling away?
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