The Story
Long ago, in a small village nestled beneath the blue Catskill Mountains of New York, there lived a man named Rip Van Winkle. Everyone in the village liked Rip. He was cheerful, good-natured, and always ready to help his neighbours mend a fence or find a lost cow. The only trouble was that Rip found it very hard to do his own work. His farm was the most tangled, weedy patch in the whole valley.
To escape his chores — and his wife's lectures — Rip often wandered up into the mountains with his old dog Wolf. One autumn afternoon he climbed higher than usual, drawn by the sound of thunder rolling through the peaks. He found a group of small, strange men dressed in old-fashioned clothes, playing ninepins on a flat rock. Each time the ball struck the pins, the noise rumbled through the valleys like thunder.
The little men were silent and solemn. They handed Rip a flagon of some mysterious drink. He sipped it, then sipped again, and before long his eyes grew heavy. He lay down on the soft grass and fell into a deep, deep sleep.
When Rip awoke, the sun was shining brightly. He rubbed his eyes and looked for Wolf — but his faithful dog was gone. He reached for his musket — but it had rusted away to nothing. His beard, which had been black the day before, now hung down to his waist, white as snow.
He stumbled down the mountain and into the village, but nothing looked familiar. The faces were all different. Children pointed at him and laughed at the old man with the long beard. When he asked for his friends, he was told they had died years ago. When he said his own name, people stared at him as though he had said something impossible.
"But I am Rip Van Winkle!" he cried.
An elderly woman peered at him and gasped. She was his own daughter, now grown with children of her own. Rip had slept for twenty years. The little country had fought a war and become a new nation. Everything had changed — everything, except the mountains standing quiet above the valley.
Rip settled in with his daughter and grandchildren, and he spent his days sitting in the sunshine telling his strange story to anyone who would listen. Some believed him; some did not. But every time the thunder rolled through the Catskills, the old-timers would smile and say the little men were at their game of ninepins once more.