How long did Rip Van Winkle sleep?

Twenty years. He lay down in the Catskills while New York was a British province and woke after the American Revolution. His daughter tells him: “it’s twenty years since he went away from home with his gun.”

Who were the strangers playing ninepins?

The village elder says they were Hendrick Hudson, who first sailed the river, and the crew of his ship the Half Moon, back in the mountains every twenty years. When it thunders over the Catskills, the old Dutch say they are at their game.

Is Rip Van Winkle in the same book as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow?

Yes. Both are in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., published in parts in 1819 and 1820, and both are told as papers of Diedrich Knickerbocker.

Where can I read Rip Van Winkle?

Free, at Project Gutenberg: in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (ebook 2048) or as a short book on its own with Arthur Rackham’s pictures (ebook 60976).

The Legend

Rip Van Winkle

Rip Van Winkle is the other American tale in the book that holds The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A good-natured idler walks into the Catskills, drinks with strangers, sleeps twenty years, and comes home to a village he no longer knows.

What is the story of Rip Van Winkle?

Rip Van Winkle is a short story by Washington Irving, published in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819 and 1820. Rip, a kind and idle Dutch villager under the Catskill Mountains, drinks with a silent company playing ninepins, sleeps twenty years, and wakes after the American Revolution to a village he does not know.

The story, in plain words

Rip Van Winkle lives in a small Dutch village at the foot of the Catskill Mountains, west of the Hudson, while New York is still a British province. Irving calls him “a simple, good-natured fellow.” He will fish all day, help any neighbor, and play with every child in the village, but he will not work his own farm, and his wife, Dame Van Winkle, never lets him forget it.

One autumn day he climbs high into the mountains with his gun and his dog, Wolf. A short, square-built stranger in old Dutch dress asks for help with a keg. In a hollow among the cliffs a silent company is playing at ninepins, and the rolling balls sound like thunder. Rip drinks from their flagon and falls asleep.

He wakes on a bright morning with a rusted gun, a beard a foot long, and no dog. Down in the village nobody knows him. The inn is now a hotel, and on its sign the face of King George has been repainted as General Washington. The crowd at the door is arguing about an election. His wife is dead, his friends are gone, and a young mother with a baby turns out to be his daughter. He has slept twenty years, through the whole Revolution. The village elder says the strangers were Hendrick Hudson and the crew of the Half Moon, who keep a vigil in the mountains every twenty years.

Why it sits beside Sleepy Hollow

Both tales are presented as papers of Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving’s fictional Dutch historian of New York, and both close with a note signed D. K. Both are set among the Dutch villages of the Hudson. In each, a man meets something uncanny on a dark hillside at night and is never quite believed afterward. The Sketch Book is mostly about England; these two stories are its American ground.

What the story leaves open

Irving never says outright whether Rip dreamed it. The neighbors wink and tap their foreheads; the old Dutch inhabitants believe him. Knickerbocker’s note insists the story “is beyond the possibility of doubt,” which is Irving’s joke, since Knickerbocker is a joke too. Rip tells the tale to every stranger at the hotel, and Irving notes that he varied it at first. You are left to decide, just as you are with the pumpkin at the end of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

In Irving’s words

Irving, on Rip’s return to the village.

Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 1820. The voice reading Irving in the films was designed for Sleepy Hollow with ElevenLabs. It is not a recording of any person. The whole story is free to read.

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 gray 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--everything 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 a day before.

On Roblox

In the game

Rip Van Winkle is not in The Sleepy Hollow Experience. Our village is built on Irving’s other story: a village in 1790, a bridge to cover by day, and a Headless Horseman who rides when the bell rings at nightfall. Rip belongs to the Catskills, across the river and up the Hudson from Sleepy Hollow. One day our village may meet old Rip too, since both tales came from the same desk. That is a thought, not a promise, and there is no date.

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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the whole of it

Asked

What people ask about Rip Van Winkle

Twenty years. He lay down in the Catskills while New York was a British province and woke after the American Revolution. His daughter tells him: “it’s twenty years since he went away from home with his gun.”
The village elder says they were Hendrick Hudson, who first sailed the river, and the crew of his ship the Half Moon, back in the mountains every twenty years. When it thunders over the Catskills, the old Dutch say they are at their game.
Yes. Both are in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., published in parts in 1819 and 1820, and both are told as papers of Diedrich Knickerbocker.
Free, at Project Gutenberg: in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (ebook 2048) or as a short book on its own with Arthur Rackham’s pictures (ebook 60976).