Pre-Tolkien Fantasy: Rip Van Winkle

Classics Illustrated because the actual first edition was from a time before cover art

Alexandru over at Barbarian Book Club posted a challenge on his blog: Review three fantasy short stories from before Lord of the Rings' publication date of 1954 and spotlight the similarities and differences in them. (And share the challenge, which I'm doing with you right now.)

My recent deep dive into pulp literature has me reading tons of pre-Tolkien SFF, so rather than dust off another Robert E. Howard story so soon after a bunch of Conan and Solomon Kane, I figured I'd dive deeper. Regress even harder, if you will.

So I went to the Nineteenth Century.

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. was a short story and essay collection published in serial format between 1819 and 1920, a full century before Edgar Rice Burroughs was writing his early John Carter and Tarzan stories. Written under the pseudonym “Geoffrey Crayon” the book was the first international blockbuster for Washington Irving (1783-1859).

Essayist, historian, author, traveler and diplomat, Irving was a cultured man who harbored a deep love for the Hudson River Valley of New York State. The Sketch Book features a varied collection of stories, fictionalized real-life events, travelogue essays and so forth that are written in a smooth, easygoing style that rolls off the pages with endless charm. However, only a few of the stories within qualify as fantasy, and they are two of his most famous pieces.

Written under the literary conceit of being “discovered” by a (completely fictional) historian named Diedrich Knickerbocker, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow have become fixtures of the American literary folklore, but they're both complete fantasies, made up, as far as I could determine, by Irving himself.

Rip Van Winkle tells the story of the eponymous Dutch-American colonist living in a sleepy village along the Catskill, err, Kaatskill Mountains. Rip is a kind and gentle man, but lazy. Always willing to help other people out with stuff, but never able to get his own affairs in order, his condition isn't helped by his formidable harridan of a wife, who scolds and scolds and scolds him endlessly.

His only real companion is his dog Wolf, and his only real escape is to run away into the mountains to hunt or fish. On one such hunting trip, he gets high up into the mountains one autumn day, and as the sun begins to set, he hears his name being called. A strange man in outdated clothes is carrying a keg up the mountain, and beckons Rip to help him. The two carry the keg to a clearing where several more men in similarly outdated clothes are playing a serious game of ninepins, their stern leader resembling famed explorer Henry, err, Hendrick Hudson. Silently drafting Rip to be their bartender, he eventually gets into the booze himself, and quickly falls asleep.

Henry Hudson, Catskills Ninepins Champion: All Year, Every Year

He wakes to find his musket rusted, his dog missing, and his joints aching. Working his way back down the mountain, he finds the village completely different. Buildings are changed, the portrait of King George over the village inn is replaced with someone called George Washington. After some confusion, Rip learns he's been asleep for twenty years and he missed the entire Revolution.

Its not all bad for him, though. He's reunited with his grown children, learns his wife died years ago, and he's now reached that age where sitting around the local inn as a town patriarch telling stories and drinking won't get him in trouble.

The story has mythological antecedents with tales of the King Under the Mountain popular in the German Alps and with countless stories with similar plotlines going back as far as ancient Greece of a mortal man stumbling upon a magical revelry and then losing years of his life. Much like Tolkien, Irving was dipping into history and myth and bolting it on to his story. Also like Tolkien, he used poetry to add texture and mood to his pieces.

Unlike Tolkien, there isn't much of a conflict here. Rip Van Winkle is told as a folk tale, an episode in the life of a small town. There is no great conflict (aside from Rip's shrewish wife). Rip is merely living his day-to-day life until chance draws him into the Weird and it changes his life forever. The stakes are very small here. Most adaptations of the story, like Will Vinton's 1978 Claymation version, have to add some kind of conflict to wring out a runtime. 

Come for the fairy tale, stay for the prog-rock acid trip

Like Tolkien, the simple pastoral life is elevated, and Rip himself would fit right in with the good folk of the Shire. Irving goes to great lengths to describe the Hudson River Valley in loving detail that settles over the reader like a warm blanket. Its folksly and very, very comfortable.

Rip Van Winkle is a charming, incidental story that has a lot of small details going on under the surface of what is seemingly a lost folktale. Its short, and absolutely worth your time.