The main story in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is the eponymous legend: Ichabod Crane’s race against the Headless Horseman, as narrated by Diedrich Knickerbocker. In the postscript, however, Washington Irving introduces the frame story, which takes place years later at a business meeting. The postscript opens with the following passage:
The preceding Tale is given, almost in the precise words in which I heard it related at a Corporation meeting of the ancient city of Manhattoes […] When [the narrator’s] story was concluded, there was much laughter and approbation, particularly from two or three deputy aldermen, who had been asleep a greater part of the time.
The frame story situates the Legend in a specific social context. The Legend was originally told to entertain a group of half-asleep businessmen and, as we later learn, the original teller “[doesn’t] believe one half of it [himself.]” These details emphasize the social incentives that might lead a storyteller to stretch the truth and calls the historical accuracy of the main story into question.
