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wenasi t1_j3g7ru3 wrote

Reply to comment by LeeroyM in The Galloping Hessian (Digital edit) by LeeroyM

I've never heard that name which made me curious, and a superficial Google search suggests "Galloping Hessian" is an US invention, and finds its origin in the German myth of the "Kopfloser Reiter" - headless horseman.

I've only searched for like 15 minutes or so, so I might very well be wrong.

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violentpac t1_j3h8tks wrote

This is very much American folklore, though there's no denying it could be inspired by others'.

From the wikipedia:

>The legend of the Headless Horseman (also known as "the Headless Hessian of the Hollow") begins in Sleepy Hollow, New York, during the American Revolutionary War. Traditional folklore holds that the Horseman was a Hessian trooper who was killed during the Battle of White Plains in 28th October 1776. He was decapitated by an American cannonball,

There is a book in the Internet Archive called the Memoirs of Major General William Heath published in 1901 in which there is a single sentence on page 73 that says:

>A shot from the American cannon at this place took off the head of a Hessian artillery-man.

If you're like me and you're thinking, "What the hell is a Hessian?" I can tell you that apparently a Hessian is a German soldier who fought with the British during the Revolutionary War. They were "auxiliaries" from the German government, as in they were hired out to the British. The term Hessian was coined because a significant number of these soldiers came from the German states of Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Hanau.

So, the Headless Hessian would, indeed, be a German. And what German would be caught dead galloping while headless?

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