Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1887 — THE COREAN RIP VAN WINKLE. [ARTICLE]

THE COREAN RIP VAN WINKLE.

A Story Very Like Irving's Legend of the Catskills. "Was the legend of Rip Van Winkle •wholly the creation of Washington Irving? asks a writer in the New York Post, or did he put into such pleasing shape some story he had unearthed in his antiquarian researches? In Perceval Lowell’s charmiDg book, “A Sketch of Corea,” p. 205, I find this legend under the head of “Demon Worship”: “There lis ed once upon a time a certain well-to-do countryman, whose business took him into the woods. He was a feller of timber, and in pursuit of his work he often went far into the mountains. AD Coreans are fond of nature, and this man was no exception to the rule; so, with his business as excuse and his love as incentive, he would ramble on in the virgin forest. One day he wandered further than usual, and found himself at last some distance up the side of the mountain. Before him lay the peak seemingly close, and under the impulse of that species of folly which urges men to go to the top of anything lofty, in spite of their better judgment and repeated experience that the end never justifies the means, he climbed it. Wfien at last he reached the summit he found there four old men busily intent on a game of go. They were seated, squatting in a circle, the go-board in their midst, while around them on the ground lay flagons of sul, and a page sat hard by to replenish the cups as they were emptied. The four looked up as he approached, bowed with great civility, and, observing that he was tired, ordered the page to pour him out some sul. He sat down, sipped some sul, and looked on afc game. After tarrying what seemed but a very short time in such agreeable company he rose to take his leave. They bade him good-by with as much courtesy as they had welcomed him, and he started down the mountain. He descended* without accident and reached the bottom in much less time than it had taken him to go up. Mindful of his wife and children, he struck out for home, and arrived there in safety before sunset. On entering his own abode he was somewhat surprised to find the place occupied by people he had never seen. What was worse, they ordered him off the premises as an intruder. He remonstrated at thus being turned out of his own house, and in the altercation that ensued the master of the place came out from an inner room to see what was going on. He was a man well on in life, and yet the woodman never remembered to have laid eyes on him before. Appealing to him, howe er, for redress, the woodman was asked his name, and on giving it the man replied that such was his first name, too. (In Corea the first name is •equivalent to our last name.) On further questioning it turned out that the present incumbent was the woodman’s own grandson. The wanderer had come back to another world. His wife had long since died, his children all were buried; most of their children, too, had passed away, and his greatgrandchildren had grown up to manhood. He had been gone 100 years.”