Legends and Lore of Sleepy Hollow and the Hudson Valley

by Jonathan Kruk

  The lore of Germany’s Rhine River trumpets ship-sinking dangers of the Lorelei. She’s a beautiful siren who enchants river pilots. Luring in sailors with her promising charms, she wrecks ships on rocks hidden in the waters beneath her craggy hill. The Highlands, by comparison, rise from the Hudson River at more dramatic angles and to twice the height of the fabled German river mount. The Hudson River imp’s death toll has been estimated at several hundred. These spirits, then, are just as formidable as the fabled Lorelei.

  The skippers and crew strongly felt it took more than shifting wind and tide to topple their sloops. They believed imps, the spirits of those who had drowned in the Hudson, existed in the river’s mists. Fail to “tip your hat” to them, and Dwerg, the Heer of Donder-Berg, trumpets out for his army of vengeful spirits. Grabbing gusts, they twirl head over heels north to a shadowy cove between Cro’ Nest and Storm King. There, Mother Kronk, the witch of the Highlands, shakes her tablecloth to stir up a surprise storm. The Heer directs his troops to drive thunder, lightning, white-capped waves and shocking wind to sink the disrespectful skipper’s vessel. Hundreds of sloops lie beneath the depths around “World’s End.” Marking the end of the world for all negligent skippers, it is, at 218 feet, the deepest spot on the river.

  THE HEER OF DONDER-BERG

  Shipping companies occasionally assigned an ocean-going captain to “skipper” sloops to Albany. Once a greenhorn skipper took a look at the gaudily painted eighty-footer that he was ordered to pilot to Albany. Manned by a handful of Dutch-speaking sailors, the ship readied to transport rum. Shunning the bone-jangling week the journey could take on the Albany Post Road, folk Washington Irving dubbed “Knickerbockers” boarded the sloop. Descendants from of the original Nieuw Nederlanders, they preferred the flamboyant rather than the English fashions. Their skipper did not know a colorful ship had to be seen “in the offing” when the Hudson’s fog crept up.

  A band of sky-eyed, New York–born Dutchmen and one runaway slave, all wearing wooden shoes and billowy skilts, rolled aboard great wooden kegs of rum. Making like a sea captain on a brigantine, the new skipper barked out long orders.

  “Grab hold the jib rope! Lower that boom! Stow our cargo! Get those Knickerbockers below!”

  The old tiller man spoke up in a Dutch-accented English recognizable today as “Brooklynese.” He let his skipper know his orders had already been carried out.

  The skipper scoffed: “There’s no mystery to this river! A child could sail it, and I shall rule it.”

  The crew widened their eyes. One whispered, “Our new Skipper is as headstrong as was old Peter Stuyvesant!”

  “Yea, but he’ll tip that feathered hat of his to the Heer of Donder-Berg!” declared the tiller man. “Or else de Imp will give him a peg leg!”

  The crew hoisted up the leading jib, unfurled the main and raised the lofty skyscraper. Leaning hard on the tiller, they pushed off Manhattan Island. Wind caught the sails, rushing the sloop across the New York Harbor. The skipper shouted out orders, but the Knickerbockers stayed a step ahead of him.

  Zigzagging from reach to reach, the skipper counted them out off his chart as they passed: “Great Chip Rock! Palisades! Tappan Zee! Haverstroo! Seyl-maker’s… We are making headway!”

  When the sloop wended its way by Stony Point, up stepped the tiller man. Pointing to a rippled dome of a mount across from Peekskill, the Dutch river man hollered: “Dondah-Boig! Youse must tip yer hat ta da Heer o’ da Dondeh-Boig! He’s master of these Highlands.”

  The skipper cried: “Tiller man! I shall tip my hat to old King George, to ladies fine and fancy, but never will I bow to foolish Dutch superstitions. I’ve sailed the seven seas! No river imp shall rule me!”

  The tiller man tried a story to convince his skipper to tip the hat. Long ago, after one of Master Hendrick Hudson’s sailor’s, John Colman, took an arrow through the neck, he became a ghost known as Dwerg. Now he commands a troop of ghost-imps, all ready to sink any ship failing to show respect with a tip of its hat. Lower the skyscraper!

  Still, the skipper dismissed the tale as nonsense. Hands of mist began swirling up from the river beneath the gnarled old hills. The sloop’s crew now feared the ship’s coming demise at World’s End off West Point, where it seemed the river had no bottom.

  Now if you only give the imps a glance, they appear as nothing more than mist or just a curl of fog. A closer inspection, however, reveals petrified faces peering through the gloom. The Mahicans knew them as manitous, or river spirits. Dutch settlers claimed they’re the souls of those who have drowned in the Hudson. The Connecticut Yankees saw them as the lost crew of a ghost ship appearing on starless nights. Whatever they may be, they spirited up the Hudson Highlands. Mustering, the imps circle their Heer, Dwerg, the master-imp of Donder-Berg!

  Dwerg glowered like an angry lord from atop a boulder at the disrespectful sloop. Wearing a doublet, bulbous breeches and a sugar loaf cap, he blasted out orders through his trumpet in low Dutch.

  Legions of river spirits tucked head under heel to obey. Whirling their breezy fingers, they caught hold of the winds gusting off the mountains and raced off to find their thunder. They blew above Bear Mountain and then pointed west to skitter beyond World’s End. Shooting up at Crow’s Nest, they dropped down into Mother Kronk’s cove. There, under the shadow of Storm King Mountain, the misty imp brigades reported to the witch of the Hudson Highlands.

  The Imp of Donder-Berg, 2008. Photo by Todd Atteberry, www.thehistorytrekker.com.

  Covered in sturgeon scales, the ancient witch flashed her eyes toward the arriving sprites. Revealing two fish living in her eye sockets, she grinned and shook her aprons to roll out the thunder. Clouds roared and rolled. Jags of lightning exploded out of the witch’s brew pot. She offered to trade her storm for the skipper’s bones to add to her brew.

  Dwerg’s spirits raised up an anvil-headed thundercloud. They shoved it through the worregat to the Highlands. It cannonaded off the cliffs and crags, hitting the sloop, shivering its timbers. The Knickerbockers instinctively hauled down the sails. The imps got to the topsail before the crew, ripping it from the riggings! Churning their hands, they foamed up whitecaps on the river. Clouds crashed. The sloop listed toward the starboard side. Each time the skipper gave an order, the Heer countermanded him with thunder.

  It looked like doom would greet them at World’s End.

  Defiant and gripping his tricorn hard on his head, the skipper insisted they’d weather the storm, bragging he’d been through far worse on the Atlantic.

  A form appeared to perch on the bowsprit. “’Tis Dwerg!” shouted the tiller man. “De Master Imp o’ Dondah-Boig!”

  Squinting through the rain, the skipper refused to accept the Dutch imp. He claimed if anything supernatural boarded his ship, it could only be a water demon. The tiller man still urged his skipper to tip the hat. He refused. The skipper however, remembered an ancient tradition of calling upon a saint for help sailing. He ordered all hands on deck to offer a wish and a prayer for help from Saint Nicholas.

  Now these were the days before Saint Nick gained fame for bringing toys to girls and boys. Indeed, Dutch New Yorkers knew of “Sint Heer Klaas.” Every December 6, the dour-bearded bishop traveled on horseback to put treats and trinkets in children’s shoes left out on the stoop. Back then, though, folks mostly called upon him for protection when traveling over waterways.

  The Yorkers scrambled onto the rainy deck.

  “Pray to Saint Nick!” shouted the skipper. “Get that demon off my ship!”

  The raging thunder made believers of all. Obedient and humbled, everyone sang out the wish and the prayer: “Sint-Nicolaas! Behalve ons schip! (Oh, Saint Nick save our ship!)”

  It may have been a spirit or a ghost, an imp or just a passing storm, but Dwerg was no demon! He would not leave. Enraged, he shot monster lightning and thunder at the ship. BA BA BOOM!!

  The blast illuminated and reverberated through the Highlands. Tongues tied with terr
or. Wishes and prayers turned to gibberish!

  The crew and passengers’ twisted plea filled the imps with glee. Sides splitting, Dwerg laughed and chortled all the way back to his Donder-Berg boulder.

  There, still chuckling, he figured the sloop had paid the imp toll in gales of laughter. The Heer of the Donder-Berg trumpeted off the storm. Imps with breezy fingers rolled up the thunder, buried the lightning and let the sun slant down, calming the river. The skipper, wringing rainwater from his frock coat, boasted.

  “See, I told you we’d weather that storm! Imps do not rule me!”

  The insult pricked the retreating Heer’s pointy ears. Dwerg squeezed his face, raised his trumpet and blared. The horn sounded down the Donder-Berg and raced over Peekskill Bay to cross the water race by Garrison’s Landing. The Master Imp caught up with the disrespectful ocean captain. Clipping off his feathered hat, Dwerg spirited it away.

  Whisking and whirling, the imp gamboled the hat north for miles. He espied a church with a fingerling steeple. There he deposited the braggart’s tricorn. Washington Irving claimed the town was in Esopus; other sources say Kingston. A higher look indicates the cap landed atop none other than the Church of Saint Nicholas in New Hamburg on Hudson.

  Bareheaded as the bare bear of Bear Mountain, the hatless skipper slunk down below the decks. Next time that skipper, or any other who knew the Hudson’s brine, reached Donder-Berg, he tipped hat, lowered the topsail and, to be sure, called for help from Sint Heer Klaas to safely pass by Donder-Berg! Dwerg remains the “Heer” and master of those Hudson Highlands.

  SINT HEER KLAAS AND THE GODE FRAUV

  The tradition of evoking Saint Nicholas when facing dangerous seas came across the ocean with the Dutch. They became a primarily Protestant nation after overthrowing Catholic Spain. Tolerant of other religions, they kept certain customs from their days under the Spanish yoke. The Dutch adored their “Sinter Klaas.” But they adored their Holland even more.

  When Henry Hudson returned to Europe with a land claim for the Netherlands, all the Dutch East India Company could establish were a few raw trading posts. Dutch folk, prospering from world trade, did not want to settle in the New Netherlands. So, they called on Saint Nicholas for help.

  The reluctance of the Dutch to settle the New Netherlands forced the Dutch West India Company to accept an idea given to them by a woman. The gode frauv, or good wife, of one of the company suggested a ship go to the New World with Sinter Klaas. The men first scoffed: “How can you put a spirit on a ship?” The good woman explained, “Not the spirit, but the image of Sinter Klaas carved into the ship’s mast.” Desperate for colonists, the company agreed to try to lure them with a wooden figurehead.

  They placed the wooden figure of the dour-robed and red-bearded bishop on the prow of a colony-bound ship. Adoring Sinter Klaas, new settlers boarded the ship assured of protection across the ocean. Once in New Amsterdam, however, they refused to stay on raw Manhattan until the skipper agreed to leave the ship’s Sinter Klaas with them. The wooden Sinter Klaas stood for ages near the former fort and old Broadway. Wags even put tobacco into the saint’s pipe and lit it for him. Good luck, healing smoke and visions came to all who breathed in the smoke of Sinter Klaas.

  Granted, much of this legend was collected and retold by Washington Irving and his pal James Kirke-Pauling. No record has been found of the gode frauv or the Sinter Klaas ship. The tale still shows the roots of fear and wonder surrounding the lower Hudson Valley. Simply coming to the region required a little prayer to Saint Nicholas to appease the spirits.

  THE AGENT AND THE IMPS

  The folk traditions and legends of the Hudson River tell of imps, manitous or spirits inhabiting the Hudson River Highlands since precolonial times. Reports of these encounters, however, persist into the twenty-first century.

  A real estate agent from Cold Spring on Hudson reported an unsettling encounter. Sailing with her husband, confident and comfortable at the helm of their sailboat, they slipped into the Hudson Highlands near Donderberg Mountain. Later she described what happened as an out-of-body experience.

  The agent explained:

  The market was very good in the nineties. We were able to buy a sailboat. We docked it down river, at Haverstraw Bay and always took it south toward New York harbor. We’d go out into Verrazano Narrows, even into the ocean. My husband handled anything the wind and tides threw at us. He loves it, and is quite an accomplished sailor.

  Well, one day, we decided to go north of Haverstraw Bay for a change. We wanted to sail by our home in Cold Spring. We never got there. We set out fine, maneuvering by Stony Point and the old lighthouse, beautifully. Jones Point and Kidd’s Plug had some tricky tacking. I helped with the sails as we glided toward the Bear Mountain Bridge. I heard something about a pirate ship sinking and their ghosts spooking boats today.

  The Realtor went on:

  We passed by Donderberg, and there everything went wild. We didn’t see it at first, but odd patches of fog swirled up from the river. The wind hit us from two different directions. My husband adjusted the sails. He did everything by the book. The boat took off in the wrong direction. He yelled, “I can handle this!” When he tried to bring us back, our boat spun around. We had no control over our sails. We decided to head back down river, just to get out of there.

  It was like I could see us, as if from above, doing the right things, but our efforts had no effect on the boat. Sailing by Donderberg was an out-of-body experience. My husband, usually in control on the boat, just gave up completely flustered.

  Following the event, she felt compelled to seek an explanation for something beyond wind, tide and sail. She had discovered the imps of Donder-Berg!

  Oddly, the Highlands’ dramatic beauty attracts relatively few boaters today. The Realtor’s experience may not be unique. A schoolteacher from Ossining, New York, may have encountered what is truly more than the sum of wind, tide and storm on the Highlands:

  My motorboat was suddenly surrounded by fog rising as we entered Peekskill Bay. Then a thunderstorm slammed us. The shores of the river just vanish into mists. I couldn’t tell which direction I was headed. I was stunned finding myself genuinely scared. The whole thing then passed with surprising speed, blowing off my hat!

  BERMUDA TRIANGLE ON THE HUDSON

  Apparently, the Realtor and teacher were lucky. Christopher Letts, the Tarrytown Lighthouse keeper, fisherman and historian, speculates that hundreds of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sailing sloops sank while trying to navigate the Hudson Highlands. “Sloops needed to make a profit,” he explains.

  “Undermanned, with a crew of maybe three or four, they were often overloaded with lumber, hay, wheat, cows and all. This made them unwieldy and sinkable in a storm.” There’s more at play in the Highlands.

  Thunderstorms, hidden by the Highlands, not only surprise powerboaters today but seem to descend upon them with unexpected speed. Reverberating off the craggy rocks like cannon shot, the storms envelop. Shocked to find their boat lost in a river squall, people describe a supernatural sensation.

  Granted the tradition of tipping the hat or lowering your topsail rose from the savvy sailing needed to navigate through the tricky Hudson Highlands. Winds sweeping along the river and swooping down from the almost mountain-high hills clipped the sky-scraping sail while literally lowering the boom on the mainsail. Indeed, one poor sailor in 1866, according to the venerable book Sloops on the Hudson, had his head snapped off when a rogue wind got hold of a line. Early in the 1700s, Roger Brett, a British naval officer, was flummoxed by the wild Highland winds. They too caught hold of his boom, breaking his back, sending him under the ever-shifting waters of the Hudson and turning him into a local ghost. The frequency of sudden storms, disaster and death in the north of the Tappan Zee through the Highlands gives reason for people to look for an explanation beyond wind and tide. Imps on the Hudson appear plausible.

  Today’s Hudson River pilots are professionals who steer great diesel-power
ed ships up and down the river and know the river best. They keep the tradition of acknowledging the imps with a tip of their hats before chugging by Donder-Berg. The Rhine has its shipwrecking sirens. The Sargasso Sea swallows planes in its Bermuda Triangle. The Hudson, however, has its endangering, enduring imps.

  THE SPUYTEN DUYVIL

  The green skipper of yore was not the only one to see demons on the Hudson. Another bedeviling natural phenomenon called for a supernatural explanation. Once upon a time, Marble Hill sat on the very tip of Manhattan Island. The Harlem River looped around the little neighborhood to flow into the mighty Hudson. The ever-shifting waters where Manhattan meets the Bronx swirled wildly when the tide changed. Crossing the narrow Harlem at Marble Hill proved harrowing—timing mattered. Dutch settlers traveling in the mid-1600s from Manhattan to visit Jonas Bronck or Adrian Onder Donck called for Johannes Verveelen’s ferry. If the tide was low, they waded across; when the tide changed, however, they witnessed whirlpools and water spurting between rocks. Sensing something beyond the powers of nature at work, the Dutch christened the river meeting “Spuitende Duivel,” or spouting devil.

  A bit of local lore reflects this feeling of something extraordinary there. Washington Irving, of course, took up accounts probably gleaned from Dutch New Yorkers. He tells of the indefatigable trumpeter to the director general of the New Netherlands, Anthony van Corlear. A barrel-chested, beer-swilling, flamboyant flirt, he served as “sounder of the brass” for all manner of alarms. This fellow’s fame, however, stemmed from his prominent proboscis. Two birds could perch upon Anthony’s nose and still there’d be room for a crow to sit.