Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Rip Van Winkle is a short humorous story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. After drinking some liquor, Rip Van Winkle settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes and returns to his village, where he finds twenty years have passed.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is among the earliest examples of American fiction still read today. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a lean, lanky, and extremely superstitious schoolmaster. As Crane leaves a party he attended on an autumn night, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, who is supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head".