Ichabod Lovecraft-Part Five

Whip-poor-wills call in weird fiction. They call in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," too:

     Then, 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 whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path [. . .].

They are all through "The Dunwich Horror," Here is a similar passage from that story by H.P. Lovecraft:

     Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises.

A weird and supernatural atmosphere prevails in parts of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." After all, it was first in print during the Romantic period in America when logic and reason were placed on the back burner.

We think of Nathaniel Hawthorne as having been influenced by Puritanism and one of its exemplars, Cotton Mather (1663-1728). As it turns out, Hawthorne's great-great-grandfather was Judge John Hathorne (1641-1717), who, like Mather, was involved in the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693. But Cotton Mather is mentioned in Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," too. Ichabod Crane is described as "a perfect master of Cotton Mather’s 'History of New England Witchcraft'." Mather is also mentioned in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, including in "The Unnamable," published in Weird Tales in July 1925 while its author was living near Red Hook and about to write about the horrors of that place. If the works of Cotton Mather are a kind of early-American grimoire, then there are grimoires in the form of his books in both Irving and Lovecraft.

To be continued . . .

"Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him."

A painterly illustration of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by American artist William J. Wilgus (1819-1853).

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley