 | Wolfert's roost |  |
CHRONICLE III.
The revolutionary war was over. The debatable ground had
once more become a quiet agricultural region; the border chivalry
had turned their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks, and hung up their guns, only to be taken down
occasionally in a campaign against wild pigeons on the hills, or wild
ducks upon the Hudson. Jacob Van Tassel, whilome carried
captive to New York, a flagitious rebel, had come forth from captivity
a “hero of seventy-six.” In a little while he sought the
scenes of his former triumphs and mishaps, rebuilt the Roost, restored
his goose-gun to the hooks over the fireplace, and reared
once more on high the glittering weathercocks.
Years and years passed over the time-honored little mansion.
The honeysuckle and the sweetbrier crept up its walls; the wren
and the phœbe bird built under the eaves; it gradually became
almost hidden among trees, through which it looked forth, as with
half-shut eyes, upon the Tappan Sea. The Indian spring, famous in
the days of the wizard sachem, still welled up at the bottom of
the green bank; and the wild brook, wild as ever, came babbling
down the ravine, and threw itself into the little cove where of
yore the water-guard harbored their whaleboats.
Such was the state of the Roost many years since, at the
time when Diedrich Knickerbocker came into this neighborhood,
in the course of his researches among the Dutch families for materials
for his immortal history. The exterior of the eventful
little pile seemed to him full of promise. The crow-step gables
were of the primitive architecture of the province. The weather-cocks
which surmounted them had crowed in the glorious days of
glittered of yore on the great Vander Heyden palace at Albany!
The interior of the mansion fulfilled its external promise.
Here were records of old times; documents of the Dutch dynasty,
rescued from the profane hands of the English, by Wolfert
Acker, when he retreated from New Amsterdam. Here he had
treasured them up like buried gold, and here they had been miraculously
preserved by St. Nicholas, at the time of the conflagration
of the Roost.
Here then did old Diedrich Knickerbocker take up his abode
for a time, and set to work with antiquarian zeal to decipher these
precious documents, which, like the lost books of Livy, had baffled
the research of former historians; and it is the facts drawn
from these sources which give his work the preference, in point
of accuracy, over every other history.
It was during his sojourn in this eventful neighborhood, that
the historian is supposed to have picked up many of those legends,
which have since been given by him to the world, or found
among his papers. Such was the legend connected with the old
Dutch church of Sleepy Hollow. The church itself was a monument
of bygone days. It had been built in the early times of
the province. A tablet over the portal bore the names of its
founders: Frederick Filipson, a mighty man of yore, patroon
of Yonkers, and his wife Katrina Van Courtland, of the Van
Courtlands of Croton; a powerful family connexion, with one foot
resting on Spiting Devil Creek, and the other on the Croton River.
Two weathercocks, with the initials of these illustrious personages,
graced each end of the church, one perched over the belfry,
the other over the chancel. As usual with ecclesiastical
contradiction between them on all points of windy doctrine;
emblematic, alas! of the Christian propensity to schism
and controversy.
In the burying-ground adjacent to the church, reposed the
earliest fathers of a wide rural neighborhood. Here families
were garnered together, side by side, in long platoons, in this last
gathering place of kindred. With pious hand would Diedrich
Knickerbocker turn down the weeds and brambles which had
overgrown the tombstones, to decipher inscriptions in Dutch and
English, of the names and virtues of succeeding generations of
Van Tassels, Van Warts, and other historical worthies, with
their portraitures faithfully carved, all bearing the family likeness
to cherubs.
The congregation in those days was of a truly rural character.
City fashions had not as yet stole up to Sleepy Hollow. Dutch
sun-bonnets and honest homespun still prevailed. Every thing
was in primitive style, even to the bucket of water and tin cup
near the door in summer, to assuage the thirst caused by the heat
of the weather or the drouth of the sermon.
The pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding board, and the
communion table, curiously carved, had each come from Holland
in the olden time, before the arts had sufficiently advanced in the
colony for such achievements. Around these on Sundays would
be gathered the elders of the church, gray-headed men who led
the psalmody, and in whom it would be difficult to recognize the
hard-riding lads of yore, who scoured the debatable land in the
time of the revolution.
The drowsy influence of Sleepy Hollow was apt to breathe
seen with his handkerchief over his face to keep off the flies, and
apparently listening to the dominie; but really sunk into a summer
slumber, lulled by the sultry notes of the locust from the
neighboring trees.
And now a word or two about Sleepy Hollow, which many
have rashly deemed a fanciful creation, like the Lubberland of
mariners. It was probably the mystic and dreamy sound of the
name which first tempted the historian of the Manhattoes into its
spellbound mazes. As he entered, all nature seemed for the
moment to awake from its slumbers and break forth in gratulations.
The quail whistled a welcome from the corn field; the
loquacious cat-bird flew from bush to bush with restless wing proclaiming
his approach, or perked inquisitively into his face, as if
to get a knowledge of his physiognomy. The woodpecker tapped
a tattoo on the hollow apple tree, and then peered round the
trunk, as if asking how he relished the salutation; while the
squirrel scampered along the fence, whisking his tail over his head
by way of a huzza.
Here reigned the golden mean extolled by poets, in which no
gold was to be found and very little silver. The inhabitants of
the Hollow were of the primitive stock, and had intermarried and
bred in and in, from the earliest time of the province, never
swarming far from the parent hive, but dividing and subdividing
their paternal acres as they swarmed.
Here were small farms, each having its little portion of meadow
and corn field; its orchard of gnarled and sprawling apple
trees; its garden in which the rose, the marigold and hollyhock,
grew sociably with the cabbage, the pea, and the pumpkin: each
with an old hat nailed against the wall for the housekeeping wren;
the coop on the grass-plot, where the motherly hen clucked round
with her vagrant brood: each had its stone well, with a moss-covered
bucket suspended to the long balancing pole, according to
antediluvian hydraulics; while within doors resounded the eternal
hum of the spinning wheel.
Many were the great historical facts which the worthy Diedrich
collected in these lowly mansions, and patiently would he sit
by the old Dutch housewives with a child on his knee, or a purring
grimalkin on his lap, listing to endless ghost stories spun
forth to the humming accompaniment of the wheel.
The delighted historian pursued his explorations far into the
foldings of the hills where the Pocantico winds its wizard stream
among the mazes of its old Indian haunts; sometimes running
darkly in pieces of woodland beneath balancing sprays of beech
and chestnut: sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in
fresh green intervals; here and there receiving the tributes of
silver rills which came whimpering down the hill sides from their
parent springs.
In a remote part of the Hollow, where the Pocantico forced
its way down rugged rocks, stood Carl's mill, the haunted house
of the neighborhood. It was indeed a goblin-looking pile; shattered
and time-worn; dismal with clanking wheels and rushing
streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises. A horse shoe
nailed to the door to keep off witches, seemed to have lost its
power; for as Diedrich approached, an old negro thrust his head
all dabbled with flour, out of a hole above the water wheel, and
grinned and rolled his eyes, and appeared to be the very hobgoblin
of the Hollow, abounding in that valuable information never to
be acquired from books. Diedrich Knickerbocker soon discovered
his merit. They had long talks together seated on a broken
millstone, heedless of the water and the clatter of the mill; and
to his conference with that African sage, many attribute the surprising,
though true story of Ichabod Crane, and the Headless
Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. We refrain, however, from giving
farther researches of the historian of the Manhattoes, during his
sojourn at the Roost; but may return to them in future pages.
Reader, the Roost still exists. Time, which changes all
things, is slow in its operations on a Dutchman's dwelling. The
stout Jacob Van Tassel, it is true, sleeps with his fathers; and
his great goose-gun with him: yet his strong-hold still bears the
impress of its Dutch origin. Odd rumors have gathered about
it, as they are apt to do about old mansions, like moss and weather
stains. The shade of Wolfert Acker still walks his unquiet
rounds at night in the orchard; and a white figure has now and
then been seen seated at a window and gazing at the moon,
from a room in which a young lady is said to have died of love
and green apples.
Mementoes of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker are
still cherished at the Roost. His elbow chair and antique writing-desk
maintain their place in the room he occupied, and his
old cocked hat still hangs on a peg against the wall.
| Wolfert's roost | |