What is the plot, rising action, falling action and other elements of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving?

One element
not mentioned in the examination of 's story, "" is point of view.  This story and
"Rip van Winkle" are both from Irving's The Sketch Book.  Both
tale are supposedly handed down from

the papers of the
late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curous in the Dutch
history of the province and the maners of the decendants from its primitive settlers.  His
historical researches, however, did not lie so much among books, as among men...

Thus, the tales of Knickerbocker are handed down, and Irving
presents himself as the narrator of one of his tales.  So, he is narrating a story that has told
to Knickerbocker.  Then, within the tale told thrice, the characters in "The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow" tell stories themselves, with all the narrators being unreliable.  Without
any reliable narrator, Irving has fun having Ichabod Crane frightened by the story of the
Headless Horseman, a story within a story.

Clearly, the emotional distance
that all these unreliable narrators create keeps the reader from empathizing with any character.
In this manner the humorous tone prevails as the reader, then, focuses more upon it. And, it is
this humor as Irving describes the unlikely figure of Crane who supposes himself a courter of
Katrina van Tassel and who ingratiates himself to the old wives of the community that has made
this story distinctively American and a favorite for many generations.