His only resource on such occasions, either
to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm
tunes; and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their
doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his
nasal melody, "in linked sweetness long drawn out," floating from
the distant hill or along the dusky road.
* The whip-poor-will is a bird which is only heard at night. It
receives its name from its note, which is thought to resemble
those words.
Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long
winter evenings with the old Dutch wives as they sat spinning by
the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the
hearth, and listen to their marvellous tales of ghosts and
goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted
bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless
horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes
called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of
witchcraft and of the direful omens and portentous sights and
sounds in the air which prevailed in the earlier times of
Connecticut, and would frighten them woefully with speculations
upon comets and shooting stars, and with the alarming fact that
the world did absolutely turn round and that they were half the
time topsy-turvy.
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