In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Ichabod Crane is esteemed for his erudition by the local women “for he had read several books quite through.” This in itself is ironic as the urbane, well-read Irving satirizes the simple, easily-impressed rural people. Ichabod’s favorite book, however, of which he is said to be a complete master, is Cotton Mather’s History of New England Witchcraft. Ichabod’s continual study of this volume is ironic firstly in view of his own superstitious and fearful nature, as he must be continually terrifying himself. Indeed, it almost seems as though this is his object, since it is his habit to read these “direful tales in the gathering dusk:”

Then, as he wended his way to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, the boding cry of the tree toad, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, fluttered his excited imagination.

It is also ironic that the schoolmaster, charged with bringing education and enlightenment to Sleepy Hollow, chooses as his favored reading material a compendium of superstitious tales rather than a more rigorous academic work. Mather himself left a legacy of scientific discourses, including his work on inoculation, as well as sermons and theological writing, but it is his work on witchcraft, essentially a book of childish stories, that Ichabod reads over and over again.