Rip Van Winkle

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"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection of stories entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Although the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills."^[1]

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Characters 3 Literary origins 4 Adaptations 5 Allusions 6 See also 7 References 8 External links 8.1 Sources 8.2 Other

[edit] Plot summary

The story of Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. Rip Van Winkle, a villager of Dutch descent, lives in a nice village at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains. An amiable man whose home and farm suffer from his lazy neglect, he is loved by all but his wife. One autumn day he escapes his nagging wife by wandering up the mountains. After encountering strangely dressed men, rumored to be the ghosts of Henry Hudson's crew, who are playing nine-pins, and after drinking some of their liquor, he settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes up twenty years later and returns to his village. He finds out that his wife is dead and his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into trouble when he hails himself a loyal subject of King George III, not knowing that in the meantime the American Revolution has taken place. An old local recognizes him, however, and Rip's now grown daughter eventually puts him up. As Rip resumes his habit of idleness in the village, and his tale is solemnly believed by the old Dutch settlers, certain hen-pecked husbands especially wish they shared Rip's luck.

[edit] Characters

• Rip Van Winkle - a henpecked husband who loathes 'profitable labor'.
• Dame Van Winkle - Rip Van Winkle's cantankerous wife.
• Rip - Rip Van Winkle's son.
• Judith Gardenier - Rip Van Winkle's daughter.
• Derrick Van Bummel - the local schoolmaster and later a member of Congress.
• Nicholas Vedder - landlord of the local inn.
• Mr. Doolittle - a hotel owner.

[edit] Literary origins

The story is a close adaptation of Peter Klaus the Goatherd by J.C.C. Nachtigal, which is a shorter story set in a German village.

It is also close to Karl Katz, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. This story is almost identical. One difference is when he sees dwarfs playing a game of ninepins in a mountain meadow, he joins the game. The dwarfs give him a magic drink that makes him fall asleep for one hundred years.^[2] It is implied that the dwarfs are teaching him a lesson about laziness.

The story is also similar to the ancient Jewish story about Honi M'agel who falls asleep after asking a man why he is planting a carob tree which traditionally takes 70 years to mature, making it virtually impossible to ever benefit from the tree's fruit. After this exchange, he falls aleep on the ground and is miraculously covered by a rock and remains out of sight for 70 years. When he awakens, he finds a fully mature tree and that he has a grandson. When nobody believes that he is Honi, he prays to God and God takes him from this world. Note also that the family name of Honi is also a term of geometry ('M'agel' is Hebrew for 'circle maker'), as well as the family name of Rip ('Winkel' is German for 'angle').

The story is also similar to a 3rd century AD Chinese tale of Ranka, as retold in Lionel Giles in A Gallery of Chinese Immortals.

In Orkney there is a similar and ancient folklore tale linked to the Burial mound of Salt Knowe adjacent to the Ring of Brodgar. A drunken fiddler on his way home hears music from the mound. He finds a way in and finds the trowes (Trolls) having a party. He stays and plays for two hours, then makes his way home to Stenness, where he discovers fifty years have passed. The Orkney Rangers believe this may be one source for Washington Irving's tale, because his father was an Orcadian from the island of Shapinsay, and would almost certainly have often told his son the tale.

The original story was by Diogenes Laertius, an Epicurean philosopher circa early half third century, in his book On the Lives, Opinions, and Sayings of Famous Philosophers. The story is in Chapter ten in his section on the Seven Sages, who were the precursors to the first philosophers. The sage was Epimenides. Apparently Epimenides went to sleep in a cave for fifty-seven years. But unfortunately, "he became old in as many days as he had slept years." Although according to the different sources that Diogenes relates, Epimenides lived to be one hundred and fifty-seven years, two hundred and ninety-nine years, or one hundred and fifty-four years.^[3]

A similar story is told of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, Christian saints who fall asleep in a cave while avoiding Roman persecution, and awake more than a century later to find that Christianity has become the religion of the Empire.

[edit] Adaptations

The story has been adapted for other media for the last two centuries, from stage plays to an operetta to cartoons to films. Actor Joseph Jefferson was most associated with the character on the 19th century stage and made a series of short films in 1896 recreating scenes from his stage adaptation, and which are collectively in the US National Film Registry. Jefferson's son Thomas followed in his father's footsteps and also played the character in a number of early 20th century films. The story was also adapted for the show "Twilight Zone" in the 1961 episode "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" starring Oscar Beregi.

[edit] Allusions

David Bromberg's song "Kaatskill Serenade" tells the story of Rip Van Winkle from the first-person perspective.^[4] The chorus is:

Where are the men that I used to sport with?

What has become of my beautiful town?

Wolf, my old friend, you don't even know me.

This must be the end; my house has tumbled down.

Lionel Richie's "Hello" makes reference to Rip Van Winkle in the opening scene of the video when Laura, a blind subject of Ritchie's affection and student of his, acts out a scene in which she describes the character Tony Billy Boy as "a regular Rip Van Winkle". Billy Boy, just out of prison, had suggested taking Laura on a date to the Brooklyn Paramount, not knowing that in the meantime it had closed, just as Eisenhower was no longer President. He was also mentioned in the Alabama song "Mountain Music" in 1982.

The Belle & Sebastian song "I Could Be Dreaming" features band member Isobel Campbell reading a passage from "Rip Van Winkle" towards the end of the song.

American composer Ferde Grofé tells the story of Rip Van Winkle through orchestral music in his Hudson River Suite (1955) — the third movement is entitled "Rip Van Winkle."

Richard Dawkins' book Unweaving the Rainbow has a short reference to Rip Van Winkle:

The passengers, Rip van Winkles, wake stumbling into the light. After a million years of sleep, here is a whole new fertile globe, a lush planet of warm pastures, sparkling streams and waterfalls, a world bountiful with creatures, darting through alien green felicity. Our travellers walk entranced, stupefied, unable to believe their unaccustomed senses or their luck.

– ^[5]

Camp Chi, a Jewish faith summer camp in Lake Delton, Wisconsin, has an ongoing tradition where a version of Rip Van Winkle called Chi Winkle comes out from the woods each year at the session's end to wish the campers goodbye. His appearance is strikingly similar to that of the original Rip Van Winkle.

[edit] See also

• Rip Van Winkle (operetta)
• Rip Van Wink from The Beano
• Rip Van Winkle (Hellsing) from Hellsing

[edit] References

7. In Cowboy Bebop. episode 10, jet is being called a rip van winkle by an old friend

[edit] External links

[edit] Sources

• "Rip Van Winkle", illustrated by N. C. Wyeth (1921).
• "Rip Van Winkle", illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1905).
• "Rip Van Winkle", e-text from Bartleby.
• "Rip Van Winkle", audio version from 1946.
• "Rip Van Winkle", 1896 film.
• "Karl Katz", a comparison.

[edit] Other

• Rip Van Winkle Study Guide
• Irving in Birmingham