Notes from my Knapsack 11-4-21

Notes from my Knapsack 11-4-21
Jeff Gill

Two hundred years ago
___

Halloween is behind us, but with time change this weekend, the shape of the evenings will change with the door of darkness swinging towards us an hour.

The barren trees claw at the night sky, and the new chill in the air reminds us winter is coming.

It's also a good time to recall stories of long ago times lit only by fire, candlelight and lanterns all the illumination there was once the sun went down. Travel on the roads, some of those paths old even in 1821, was a different sort of venture. Wolves were still in the hills, howling; two-legged wolves sometimes haunted lonely trails at the edge of settlement.

But two hundred years ago the Welsh Hills were fertile and productive for farming and stock raising, and the folk to the north and east of Granville were friendly with villagers, at least up to a point. Sometimes, they hired schoolteachers to come out and educate their young scholars in Latin and Greek (they handled Welsh themselves). A bachelor relative of one of the early settlers, one Ichabod Rose, was engaged in this work, riding out three days a week for classes.

He was smitten by the charms of a Welsh maiden, Catherine Philipps, for the sturdy farmers from Wales wanted all their children educated, female and male alike. The problem for poor Mr. Rose was two-fold: first, Miss Philipps was not interested in him as a husband, and secondly she had a suitor, Bram Jones who had distinguished himself in the War of 1812 and now at 26 was ready to settle down. Catherine did get excellent training in her Hesiod and Virgil from Ichabod's attentions that fall, but in truth he was not encouraged by her in any way.

The infatuation was obvious enough that certain young men around Bram's age decided a lesson should be taught to the schoolteacher. One late autumn evening, as Ichabod rode his aging gelding back from the Welsh Hills to the Thrall boarding stables on Equality Street in the village, turning west at Jones Road onto Centerville Street, he looked back down the long dark tunnel of overhanging trees to the east, and saw dimly silhouetted a single rider.

This was not itself unusual, but the distant rider was at a gallop, and nervously Ichabod Rose spurred his unwilling mount for a bit more speed to the west. It was a common superstition that crossing the dip of Clear Run, over the water, one was then safe within the village's implicit embrace.

Down the slope of Tannery Hill his mount clambered, and at the water's edge he looked back up, and saw a headless horseman, all in black, loom over him above, with a flaming face eerily held out to one side. The schoolmaster shrieked, and then fell from his horse in a dead faint as the separated head was flung right at him, narrowly missing the rocks in the stream bed.

Later that night, the horse walked loose reined into the stable alone; a search party found only a smashed pumpkin by Clear Run, and the next morning the parson's wife where Rose boarded found his room emptied of everything except a tattered copy of Chapman's Homer.

These mysterious events of 1821 may have inspired certain east coast authors, or perhaps it was the other way around, but even in 2021 we know the shadows and candlelights of fall can still chill our imaginations — along with the cold winds of impending winter, now on their way out of the hills to our north.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows he owes an apology to Washington Irving, who published the original legend in 1820. Tell him what other stories might adapt to our local landscape at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.