Rip Van Winkle

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On waking, he found himself on the green mound from which he had first seen the old man in the valley. He rubbed his eyes—it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was circling high above and meeting the pure mountain breeze with its breast. “Surely,” thought Rip, “I have not slept here all night.” He recalled the events before he fell asleep. The strange man with a barrel of liquor—the mountain ravine—the wild retreat among the rocks—the woeful-looking party playing ninepins—the jug—“Oh! that jug! that wicked jug!” thought Rip—“what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle?”

He looked around for his gun. In place of his clean, well-oiled hunting gun, an old firearm lay beside him. Its barrel was crusted with rust, its firing mechanism falling off and its wooden stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the solemn mountain revellers had played a trick on him. Perhaps, after giving him liquor, they had stolen his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled for him and shouted his name, but all in vain. The echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.

He decided to return to the place of the previous evening’s revels and demand his dog and gun if he met anyone from the party. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and unable to move as freely as usual. “These mountain beds do not agree with me,” thought Rip, “and if these revels leave me laid up with aching joints, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.” With some difficulty he got down into the valley. He found the channel that he and his companion had climbed the evening before. To his astonishment, a mountain stream now foamed down it, leaping from rock to rock and filling the valley with babbling murmurs. He managed, however, to scramble up its sides. He struggled through thickets of birch, sassafras and witch-hazel, sometimes tripping or getting tangled in the wild grape vines. Their coils and tendrils twisted from tree to tree and spread a kind of net across his path.

At last he reached the place where the ravine had opened through the cliffs into the amphitheatre. No trace of the opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip could go no further. Again he called and whistled for his dog. His only answer was the cawing of a flock of idle crows, playing high in the air around a dry tree that overhung a sunny cliff. Safe in their lofty position, they seemed to look down and mock the poor man’s troubles. What was to be done? The morning was passing away, and Rip felt starving because he had missed breakfast. He grieved at giving up his dog and gun, and dreaded meeting his wife. But he could not starve in the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firearm, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward.

As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none he knew. This surprised him somewhat: he had thought he knew everyone in the surrounding country. Their clothes, too, were in a different style from the one he was used to. They all stared at him in equal surprise. Whenever they looked at him, they invariably stroked their chins. Seeing this gesture over and over, Rip did the same without thinking. To his astonishment, his beard had grown a foot long!

He had now entered the outskirts of the village. A troop of unfamiliar children ran at his heels, shouting after him, and pointing at his grey beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognised as an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered: it was larger and more crowded. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar places had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors—strange faces at the windows—everything was strange. He now felt uneasy; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Catskill mountains—there ran the silver Hudson at a distance—there was every hill and valley precisely as it had always been—Rip was deeply puzzled—“That jug last night,” thought he, “has thoroughly muddled my poor head!”

With some difficulty, he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house fallen into decay—the roof had fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog, that looked like Wolf, was creeping around it. Rip called him by name, but the dog snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was a cruel blow indeed—“My very dog,” sighed poor Rip, “has forgotten me!”

He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, desolate, and apparently abandoned. This desolation overcame all his fears of his wife. He called loudly for his wife and children. For a moment his voice rang through the lonely rooms; then all was silent again.

He hurried out and hastened to his old meeting place, the village inn—but that too was gone. A large, rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows. Some were broken and patched with old hats and petticoats, women’s skirts. Above the door was painted, “The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.” Instead of the great tree that once sheltered the quiet little Dutch inn, a tall, bare pole now stood there. Something on top looked like a red nightcap. A flag fluttered from it, bearing a strange collection of stars and stripes—all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognised on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe, but even this had been strangely transformed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and pale yellow-brown, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, with its brim turned up, and underneath was painted in large letters, “GENERAL WASHINGTON.”

There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip remembered. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, argumentative air about them, instead of the old unruffled calm and sleepy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fine long pipe, sending out clouds of tobacco-smoke, instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, slowly reading out an ancient newspaper. In their place, a lean, sour-looking fellow with pockets full of leaflets was loudly and fiercely holding forth about citizens’ rights—elections—members of Congress—liberty—Bunker’s Hill—heroes of seventy-six—and other words that were perfect Babylonish jargon, an incomprehensible babble, to the bewildered Van Winkle.

The appearance of Rip, with his long, grey-streaked beard, his rusty hunting gun, his rough clothes, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, eyeing him from head to foot, with great curiosity. The speaker bustled up, drew him a little aside and asked, “Which side do you vote for?” Rip stared in blank incomprehension. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, rose on tiptoe and asked in his ear, “Are you Federal or Democrat?” Rip was equally unable to understand this question. Then a knowing, self-important old gentleman in a sharp cocked hat made his way through the crowd, pushing people aside with his elbows. He planted himself before Van Winkle, one hand on his hip and the other resting on his cane. His keen eyes and sharp hat seemed to pierce Rip’s very soul. In a stern tone, he demanded, “What brings you to the election with a gun on your shoulder and a mob at your heels? Do you mean to start a riot in the village?”

“Alas! gentlemen,” cried Rip, rather alarmed, “I am a poor, quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the King, God bless him!”

A general shout burst from the bystanders: “A Tory! A Tory! A spy! A refugee! Shove him! Away with him!” With great difficulty, the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order. With a brow ten times sterner than before, he again demanded of the unknown culprit why he had come and whom he was looking for. The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbours, who used to spend their time at the tavern.

“Well—who are they?—name them.”

Rip thought for a moment and asked, “Where’s Nicholas Vedder?”

There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin, piping voice, “Nicholas Vedder? why, he is dead and gone for eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about him, but that’s rotten and gone too.”

“Where’s Brom Dutcher?”

“Oh, he joined the army at the beginning of the war. Some say he was killed at the attack on Stony-Point—others say he was drowned in a sudden storm at the foot of Antony’s Nose, a hill. I don’t know—he never came back again.”

“Where’s Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?”

“He went off to the wars, too; was a great general in the militia, the citizen army, and is now in Congress.”

Rip’s heart sank at these sad changes in his home and friends, and at finding himself alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him, too. They spoke of such enormous stretches of time and matters he could not understand: war—Congress—Stony-Point. He had no courage to ask about any more friends, but cried out in despair, “Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?”

“Oh, Rip Van Winkle!” exclaimed two or three. “Oh, to be sure! that’s Rip Van Winkle over there, leaning against the tree.”

Rip looked and saw an exact copy of himself as he had been when he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely bewildered. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was and what his name was.

“God knows!” he exclaimed at his wit’s end; “I’m not myself—I’m somebody else—that’s me over there—no—that’s somebody else who has stepped into my shoes—I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they’ve changed my gun, and everything’s changed, and I’m changed, and I can’t tell what my name is, or who I am!”

The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, exchange knowing winks, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There were also whispers about taking the gun and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief. At the very suggestion, the self-important man in the cocked hat withdrew in some haste. At this critical moment a fresh-faced, pretty woman pushed through the crowd to get a look at the grey-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, who began to cry, frightened by his appearance. “Hush, Rip,” she cried, “hush, you little fool; the old man won’t hurt you.” The child’s name, the mother’s manner and the tone of her voice all awakened a chain of memories in his mind.

“What is your name, my good woman?” he asked.

“Judith Gardenier.”

“And your father’s name?”

“Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name. It’s twenty years since he left home with his gun, and he has never been heard of since. His dog came home without him. But nobody can tell whether he took his own life or was carried away by Native Americans. I was then but a little girl.”

Rip had only one more question to ask. He asked it in a faltering voice:

“Where’s your mother?”

Oh, she too had died only a short time ago. She burst a blood vessel in a fit of anger at a peddler from New England.

There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this news. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. “I am your father!” he cried. “Young Rip Van Winkle once—old Rip Van Winkle now—does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?”

Everyone stood amazed. Then an old woman tottered out of the crowd and put her hand to her brow. Peering beneath it into his face for a moment, she exclaimed, “Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle—it is himself. Welcome home again, old neighbour. Why, where have you been these twenty long years?”

Rip’s story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had seemed to him like only one night. The neighbours stared when they heard it. Some winked at each other and poked their tongues into their cheeks. The self-important man in the cocked hat had returned to the scene once the alarm was over. He turned down the corners of his mouth and shook his head—whereupon everyone in the gathering shook their heads too.

They decided, however, to ask the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the oldest inhabitant of the village, and very familiar with all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighbourhood. He remembered Rip at once and confirmed his story in the most satisfactory way. He assured the company that his ancestor, the historian, had passed down this fact: strange beings had always haunted the Catskill Mountains. It was said that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of watch there every twenty years with his crew of the Half-moon. In this way, he was allowed to revisit the scenes of his venture and keep a guardian eye on the river and the great city named after him. He said his father had once seen them in their old Dutch clothes playing ninepins in a mountain hollow. He himself had heard the sound of their balls one summer afternoon, like distant peals of thunder.

To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip’s daughter took him home to live with her. She had a snug, well-furnished house and a sturdy, cheerful farmer for a husband. Rip remembered him as one of the little rascals who used to climb on his back. As for Rip’s son and heir, that copy of himself he had seen leaning against the tree, he was employed on the farm. But he showed an inherited tendency to attend to anything except his own business.

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