It is also frequently used as an auditory symbol of rural America, as in Washington Irving's story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", or as a plot device. For example, William Faulkner's short story, "Barn Burning", makes several mentions of whip-poor-wills, e.g.: "and then he found that he had been asleep because he knew it was almost dawn, the night almost over. He could tell that from the whip-poor-wills. They were everywhere now among the dark trees below him, constant and inflectioned and ceaseless, so that, as the instant for giving over to the day birds drew nearer and nearer, there was no interval at all between them."