Rip Van Winkle

Rip Van Winkle, folk tale by U.S. author Washington Irving from his collection, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819–20). The story concerns a cheerful but unsuccessful farmer who, while hunting in the Catskill Mountains, meets some quaintly dressed men playing ninepins. After he drinks from their keg of liquor he falls asleep and wakes to find his dog gone and his gun rusted. He makes his way home and discovers that he has slept for 20 years, his children have grown, and he has become a citizen of the United States instead of a subject of King George III. He later finds that the men he encountered were the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew.