Rip Van Winkle

In a little village at the foot of the Catskill Mountains, in the days when America still belonged to King George the Third, there lived a simple, good-natured fellow named Rip Van Winkle. He was a great favourite among all the good wives of the village, who took his part in all family squabbles; the children shouted with joy whenever he approached — he helped at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Not a dog would bark at him in the whole neighbourhood.

The great error in Rip's character was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour. It could not be from lack of perseverance: he would sit on a wet rock all day and fish without a murmur, even when he was not encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours, trudging through woods and swamps. He would never refuse to assist a neighbour, even in the roughest work; the women of the village employed him to run their errands and do little odd jobs their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own. His own farm was the worst-conditioned in the county; his fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray or get among the cabbages.

His wife, Dame Van Winkle, kept a very different opinion of him. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going: everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying — he shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, and said nothing. His only true friend was his dog Wolf, who was as henpecked as his master. For a long while, Rip consoled himself by frequenting a kind of club of the sages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench before the small inn, discussing village gossip and drowsy stories about nothing at all. But even from this stronghold poor Rip was at length routed by his wife, who would break in upon the tranquillity of the assemblage and call the members all to naught. Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape the labour of the farm and the clamour of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods.

One fine autumn day, Rip had scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Catskills, squirrel-shooting. Late in the afternoon he threw himself, panting, on a green knoll, and lay musing as evening gathered — dreading, as usual, the terrors of Dame Van Winkle waiting at home. As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance calling, "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" He looked round and saw a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, bending under a burden: a short, square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair and a grizzled beard, dressed in the antique Dutch fashion. He carried a stout keg upon his shoulder, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him. Though rather shy and distrustful, Rip complied with his usual alacrity, and together they clambered up a narrow gully — the bed of a mountain torrent.

As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, coming from a deep ravine. Passing through, they came into a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices. In the centre, on a level spot, a company of odd-looking personages were playing at ninepins. They were dressed in a quaint, outlandish fashion — doublets, high-crowned hats and feathers — and they reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting. What seemed particularly strange was that, though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, they maintained the gravest faces and the most mysterious silence; nothing interrupted the stillness but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.

His companion emptied the keg into large flagons and made signs to Rip to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence and returned to their game. By degrees Rip's awe subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage. One taste provoked another; he repeated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined — and he fell into a deep sleep.

On waking, he found himself on the green knoll. It was a bright sunny morning. "Surely," thought Rip, "I have not slept here all night!" He looked for his gun, but in place of the clean, well-oiled fowling-piece he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel encrusted with rust, the stock worm-eaten. Wolf, too, had disappeared. His beard, he discovered with astonishment, had grown a foot long — and grey. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints. With some difficulty he got down into the glen; strangely, the gully up which he and his companion had climbed the night before was now a rushing stream, and of the amphitheatre no opening remained. He decided there was nothing for it but to go home — and dread Dame Van Winkle.

As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with everyone in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The village itself was altered: it was larger and more populous; rows of houses stood where none had been; strange names were over the doors, strange faces at the windows. His own house he found gone to decay — the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, the door off the hinges. He hurried to the old inn — but it too was gone, and in its place stood a rickety building with a tall pole before it, bearing a strange flag of stars and stripes; even the familiar face on the old sign was changed: the ruby face of King George had become a blue coat and a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters: GENERAL WASHINGTON. There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door — but a busy, bustling, disputatious crowd, arguing about elections, congress, liberty and other words which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle. While he slept, the American Revolution had come and gone.

"Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?" he cried at last, in despair. "Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three. "Oh, to be sure! That's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree." Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. It was his own son. And then a fresh, comely woman pressed through the crowd with a child in her arms — his daughter Judith, now grown, who told him gently that her mother too had passed away some years before. Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. In time the villagers accepted it — the oldest inhabitant confirmed the legend of Hendrick Hudson's silent crew, who kept their vigil in the mountains with their game of ninepins every twenty years. Rip went to live with his daughter, took his old place on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, a chronicler of the old times "before the war". And to this day, when the summer thunder rolls around the Catskills, the people of the village say that Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins.