Our Incrredible Valley Page 3 - Columbia County Historical Society

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Columbia County Historical Society www.cchsny.org and open space across America. The future of our communal holdings is in doubt. Never has there been more urgent need to uphold the public interest in the way Americans organize their neighborhoods, their local economies, their surrounding environments, and the quality of their lives. Sharing these beliefs and working to these ends is New York State’s spirited population of citizen activists. They are the energetic battalions in land trusts, environmental and preservation societies, park advocacy organizations, enlightened businesses and public agencies, philanthropies and editorial pages. In the Hudson Valley, where their voice is especially loud and clear, they have so far made it possible to protect, maintain, and preserve for future generations streams and wetlands, historic buildings in towns and rural places, acres of park and farmland, and scenic views in record number — although not yet enough. The devout wish of all who love it is that the Hudson Valley in its many parts will thrive and go on representing for future generations, as it does for our own, a gift of infinite value. The worry (that small dark cloud on the horizon) is that ever-present specters of indifference, short-sightedness, and worse will finally, despite all effort, alter and diminish the cherished valley beyond the point of no return. This is the profound American dilemma being faced in so many parts of our country as the twenty-first century looms: must we inevitably lose what we love, or might it yet be possible to summon the vision, the generosity of spirit, the grit to think about what we are doing, and to find the way to pass on to others the good things that those who went before have passed on to us? � Shallo, Galluscio, Bianchi & Fucito Certified Public Accountants 21 North Seventh Street, Hudson, NY 12534 • 518-828•6500 • www.empirecpa.com Accounting • Auditing • Tax Preparation • Retirement Planning • Investment Services Financial Planning • Estate & Gift Planning • Tax Advisory Services • Business valuations Cash Flow & Budget Analysis • IRS & State Audit Representation Full Service for Nonprofit Organizations Members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants • Established in 1950 4 Handbill for the Henry Clay and the Armenia, c1840s. Image size: 7" x 4" (See article on page 26.), image courtesy William P. Palmer.
Columbia County History & Heritage Spring 2005 Mythic �iver: Legends, Ghosts and Spectral Events in the Hudson Valley By: Dale Nicholson Mr. Nicholson is a retired Hudson High School social studies teacher with a doctorate in history and education. He maintains an avid interest in history and is currently authoring a book entitled An Invisible Past: An Ethnic History of Columbia County, 1640-2000. Washington Irving apparently started it all when in 1820 he published two stories destined to become famous throughout the world. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the story of Rip Van Winkle slowly gained currency. Today they are part of the cultural baggage everyone carries with them simply by virtue of being an American. E.D. Hirsch, Jr. in his Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What every American Needs to Know includes listings for each tale. The Legend is favored with “a story by Washington Irving. Its central character, Ichabod Crane, is a vain and cowardly teacher and the rival of Brom Bones for the hand of the comely Katrina Van Tassel. Bones terrorizes Crane by disguising himself as a legendary headless horseman and the latter is never seen or heard from again.” Rip’s story by Washington Irving goes this way: “The title character goes to sleep after a game of bowling and much drinking in the mountains with a band of little men. He awakens twenty years later, an old man. Back home, Rip finds that that all has changed: his wife is dead, his daughter is married, and the American Revolution has taken place.” To prove that Rip has achieved even international recognition, it might be mentioned that he is also immortalized in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a volume concentrating on mythic Europe and especially Great Britain. Myths, legends and tall tales, endemic to the valley, long predate Washington Irving (1783-1859). They go back to Native American tales of Manitou, or the Great Spirit, the numinous source of all things inexplicable. They surfaced in the years just after the first Europeans penetrated the area in the seventeenth century. There are many reminders, both natural and man-made, which might serve to inform one of the area’s legendary past. Here in Columbia County we have the Ichabod Crane school district centered in Valatie and the Rip Van Winkle bridge, the span connecting us with Greene County. The mountains which Irving helped to make famous — the Katterskils or Catskills — their sometimes misty, sometimes blue or purple-hued peaks, lurking in full view just to our west, served as Washington Irving 5 the location of the famous game of ninepin bowls, accompanied by much boozing, which set old Rip off on his twenty-year snooze. But they are so much a part of the passing scene that locals tend to spare nary a thought to their place in the valley’s traditional lore. Olana, home of famed Hudson River School artist Frederic Church gains a bit more attention, but only because of its prominent place as a tourist attraction. Irving then hardly manufactured these tales out of whole cloth. Each has a background from mythic Europe. To take just one example, stories of headless riders and the grim cult of the severed head may be connected to ancient mythologies of several European and non-European peoples, including the Dutch, Germans, Celts, and Arabs. A similar group of myths relate stories of headless horsemen in terms of the “Wild Hunt,” in which a great supernatural force sweeps across the land, almost always at night. Common in north European legend, the horseman is usually clothed all in black and, as in Irving’s rendition, is often headless. The rider’s appearance, accompanied by hounds, hell-fire, and smoke usually portends death and destruction. In Ichabod Crane’s disappearance, Irving suggests that the unfortunate schoolmaster may simply have wandered off to a nearby village. European immigrants to the Hudson river valley brought with them this rich deposit of legends and myths similar but not always identical to the ones just described. They no doubt talked of them in casual discourse to neighbors and friends. Over the years a rich local oral tradition of spectral sightings and tall tales was created. As things worked out, someone took a special interest in all of this and inevitably began to write down some of the more interesting
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Our Incrredible Valley Page 3 - Columbia County Historical Society

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