Rip Van Winkle

by Washington Irving

  As Rip and his companion approached them they suddenly desisted from their play and stared at him with such fixed statue like gaze, and such strange uncouth, lack lustre countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence and then returned to their game.

  By degree Rip’s awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavour of excellent hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another, and he reiterated 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 awaking he found himself on the green knoll from whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes – it was a bright, sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft and breasting the pure mountain breeze. ‘Surely,’ thought Rip, ‘I have not slept here all night.’ He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor – the mountain ravine – the wild retreat among the rocks – the woe begone party at ninepins – the flagon – ‘ah! that flagon! that wicked flagon!’ thought Rip – ‘what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle?’

  He looked round 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 lock falling off and the stock worm eaten. He now suspected that the grave roysters of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf too had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted his name – but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.

  He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening’s gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he arose to walk he found himself stiff in the joints and wanting in his usual activity. ‘These mountain beds do not agree with me,’ thought Rip, ‘and if this frolick should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.’ With some difficulty he got down into the glen; he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening, but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it; leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras and witch hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grape vines that twisted their coils and tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of net work in his path.

  At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs, to the amphitheatre – but no traces of such 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 was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog – he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man’s perplexities.

  What was to be done? The morning was passing away and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty fire lock 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 whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress too was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip involuntarily to do the same, when to his astonishment he found his beard had grown a foot long!

  He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him and pointing at his grey beard. The dogs too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered – it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors – strange faces at the windows – every thing was strange. His mind now misgave him; 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 Kaatskill mountains – there ran the silver Hudson at a distance – there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been – Rip was sorely perplexed – ‘That flagon last night,’ thought he, ‘has addled my poor head sadly!’

  It was with some difficulty that 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 gone to decay – the roof fallen in, the windows shattered and the doors off the hinges. A half starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name but the cur snarled, shewed his teeth and passed on. This was an unkind cut 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, forlorn and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears – he called loudly for his wife and children – the lonely chambers rung for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence.

  He now hurried forth and hastened to his old resort, the village inn – but it too was gone. A large, ricketty wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken, and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was printed ‘The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.’ Instead of the great tree, that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole with something on top that looked like a red night cap, and from it was fluttering a flag on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes – all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe, but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff; a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre; the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was printed in large characters GENERAL WASHINGTON.

  There was as usual a crowd of folk about the door; but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholaus Vedder with his broad face, double chin and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco smoke instead of idle speeches. Or Van Bummel the schoolmaster doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these a lean bilious looking fellow with his pockets full of hand bills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens – elections – members of Congress – liberty – Bunker’s hill – heroes of seventy six – and other words which were a perfect babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

  The appearance of Rip with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling piece his uncouth dress and an army of women and children at his heels soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded around him eying him from head to foot, with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and drawing him partly aside, enquired ‘on which side he voted?’ – Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little
fellow, pulled him by the arm and rising on tiptoe, enquired in his ear ‘whether he was Federal or Democrat?’ – Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question – when a knowing, self important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating as it were into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone – ‘what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?’ – ‘Alas gentlemen,’ cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, ‘I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the King – God bless him!’

  Here a general shout burst from the byestanders – ‘A tory! a tory! a spy! a Refugee! hustle him! away with him!’ – It was with great difficulty that the self important man in the cocked hat restored order; and having assumed a ten fold austerity of brow demanded again of the unknown culprit, what he came there for and whom he was seeking. 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 keep about the tavern.

  ‘– Well – who are they? – name them.’

  Rip bethought himself a moment and enquired, ‘Where’s Nicholaus Vedder?’

  There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin, piping voice, ‘Nicholaus Vedder? why he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the church yard that used to tell all about him, but that’s rotted and gone too.’

  ‘Where’s Brom Dutcher?’

  ‘Oh he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stoney Point – others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony’s Nose – 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 militia general, and is now in Congress.’

  Rip’s heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world – every answer puzzled him too by treating of such enormous lapses of time and of matters which he could not understand – war – Congress, Stoney Point – he had no courage to ask after 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 – 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! The poor fellow was now completely confounded. 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, – what was his name?

  ‘God knows,’ exclaimed he, at his wit’s end, ‘I’m not myself. – I’m somebody else – that’s me yonder – no – that’s somebody else got into my shoes – I was myself last night; but I fell asleep on the mountain – and they’ve changed my gun – and every thing’s changed – and I’m changed – and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am!’

  The byestanders began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper also about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief – at the very suggestion of which, the self important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh likely looking woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the greybearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which frightened at his looks began to cry. ‘Hush Rip,’ cried she, ‘hush you little fool, the old man won’t hurt you.’ The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. ‘What is your name my good woman?’ asked he.

  ‘Judith Gardenier.’

  ‘And your father’s name?’

  ‘Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it’s twenty years since he went away from home with his gun and never has been heard of since – his dog came home without him – but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians no body can tell. I was then but a little girl.’

  Rip had but one question more to ask, but he put it with a faltering voice –

  ‘Where’s your mother?’ –

  Oh she too had died but a short time since – she broke a blood vessel in a fit of passion at a New England pedlar. –

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

  All stood amazed, until an old woman tottering out from among the crowd put her hand to her brow and peering under it in his face for a moment 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 been to him but as one night. The neighbours stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other and put their tongues in their cheeks, and the self important man in the cocked hat, who when the alarm was over had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth and shook his head – upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage.

  It was determined, however, to take 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 most ancient inhabitant of the village and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighbourhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half Moon – being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprize and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at ninepins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard one summer afternoon the sound of their balls, 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 stout cheery farmer for a husband whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip’s son and heir, who was the ditto of himself seen leaning against the tree; he was employed to work on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to any thing else but his business.

  Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favour. Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle, with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village and a chronicle of the old times ‘before the war.’ It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war – that the country had thrown off the yoke of Old England and that instead of being a subject of his majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip in fact was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him;
but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned and that was petticoat government. Happily that was at an end – he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate or joy at his deliverance.

  He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr Doolittle’s Hotel. He was observed at first to vary on some points, every time he told it, which was doubtless owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related and not a man woman or child in the neighbourhood but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit – Even to this day they never hear a thunder storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of nine-pins; and it is a common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighbourhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle’s flagon.

  NOTE

  The foregoing tale one would suspect had been suggested to Mr Knickerbocker by a little German superstition about the emperor Frederick der Rothbart and the Kypphauser Mountain; the subjoined note, however, which he had appended to the tale, shews that it is an absolute fact, narrated with his usual fidelity. –