Rip Van Winkle.pdf

Rip Van Winkle

A Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker

By Washington Irving

(T HE FOLLOWING tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman

of New York, who was very curious in the Dutch history of the province, and the manners of the

descendants from its primitive settlers. His historical researches, however, did not lie so much among

books as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the

old burghers, and still more their wives, rich in that legendary lore so invaluable to true history.

Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed

farmhouse, under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and

studied it with the zeal of a bookworm. 1

The result of all these researches was a history of the province during the reign of the Dutch governors,

which he published some years since. There have been various opinions as to the literary character of his

work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be. Its chief merit is its scrupulous

accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its first appearance, but has since been completely

established; and it is how admitted into all historical collections as a book of unquestionable authority. 2

The old gentleman died shortly after the publication of his work, and now that he is dead and gone it

cannot do much harm to his memory to say that his time might have been much better employed in

weightier labors. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby in his own way; and though it did now and then

kick up the dust a little in the eyes of his neighbors and grieve the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt

the truest deference and affection, yet his errors and follies are remembered “more in sorrow than in

anger”; and it begins to be suspected that he never intended to injure or offend. But however his memory

may be appreciated by critics, it is still held dear among many folk whose good opinion is well worth

having; particularly by certain biscuit bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his likeness on their New

Year cakes, and have thus given him a chance for immortality almost equal to the being stamped on a

Waterloo medal or a Queen Anne’s farthing.)

By Woden, God of Saxons,

From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday,

Truth is a thing that ever I will keep

Unto thylke day in which I creep into

My sepulchre—

C ARTWRIGHT.

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Catskill Mountains. They are a

dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling

up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of

weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these

mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the

weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear

evening sky; but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray

vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown

of glory.

At the foot of these fairy mountains the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a

village whose shingle roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into

the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by

some of the Dutch colonists, in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government

of the good Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and there were some of the houses of the original

settlers standing within a few years, with lattice windows, gable fronts surmounted with weathercocks,

and built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland.

In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-

worn and weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great

Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van

Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the

siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have

observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient,

henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which

gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad

who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and

malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the

world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some

respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed. 6

Certain it is that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the

amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles, and never failed, whenever they talked those matters

over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village,

too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings,

taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians.

Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts,

clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at

him throughout the neighborhood.

The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could

not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and

heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by

a single nibble. He would carry a fowling piece on his shoulder, for hours together, trudging through

woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never

even refuse to assist a neighbor in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for

husking Indian corn, or building stone fences. The women of the village, too, used to employ him to run

their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them; in a

word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping

his farm in order, it was impossible.

In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in

the whole country; everything about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His fences were

continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure

to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had

some outdoor work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management,

acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the

worst-conditioned farm in the neighborhood.

His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten

in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally

seen trooping like a colt at his mother’s heels, equipped in a pair of his father’s cast-off galligaskins,

which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather. 10

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take

the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would

rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away, in

perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness,

and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going,

and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way

of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his

shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh

volley from his wife, so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house—the

only side which, in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband.

Rip’s sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much henpecked as his master; for Dame

Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the

cause of his master’s so often going astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he

was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods—but what courage can withstand the ever-during

and all-besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail

drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs; he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a

sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle would fly to the

door with yelping precipitation.

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never

mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener by constant use. For a long

while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the

sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench before a

small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of his majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the

shade, of a long lazy summer’s day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories

about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman’s money to have heard the profound

discussions which sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands, from

some passing traveler. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van

Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper, learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic

word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they

had taken place.

The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and

landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently

to avoid the sun, and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his

movements as accurately as by a sun-dial. It is true, he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe

incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood him, and

knew how to gather his opinions. When anything that was read or related displeased him, he was observed

to smoke his pipe vehemently, and send forth short, frequent, and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would

inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds, and sometimes taking the

pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in

token of perfect approbation.

From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife, who would

suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of the assemblage, and call the members all to nought; nor was that

august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who

charged him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness.

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the

farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would

sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he

sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. “Poor Wolf,” he would say, “thy mistress leads thee a

dog’s life of it; but never mind, my lad, while I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!” Wolf

would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master’s face, and if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he

reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the

highest parts of the Catskill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still

solitudes had echoed and reëchoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late

in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice.

From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich

woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic

course, the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy

bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands. 17

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled

with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For

some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw

their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the

village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle. 18

As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van

Winkle!” He looked around, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the

mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the

same cry ring through the still evening air: “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!”—at the same time Wolf

bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master’s side, looking fearfully down into the

glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and

perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he

carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but

supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of assistance, he hastened down to yield it. 19

On nearer approach, he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger’s appearance. He was a

short, square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique

Dutch fashion—a cloth jerkin strapped around the waist—several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample

volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his

shoulders a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with

the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity,

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