Rip Van Winkle (1910 film) Catskill Mountains hundreds of years before, and had never been heard of since. The gnomes give Rip some magic schnapps to drink, and under its influence he goes to sleep for 20 years. When he awakes, he is an old man and in ragged clothes. His dog is dead, and his rifle has rusted away. He makes his way as best he can back to the village, and his own home. But there no one knows him. He finds his wife married to another man, his daughter grown to womanhood, and most of his old friends dead and gone. Rip,
Tartary stream. But all the Tartar camp along the stream Was hush'd, and still the men were plunged in sleep." In Walter de la Mare's poem "If I were lord of Tartary", Tartary is an imaginary land full of happiness. In Washington Irving's short story "Rip Van Winkle", the title character would "sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance". Tartary Tartary (Latin: "Tartaria") or Great Tartary (Latin: "Tartaria Magna") was a historical region in northern and central Asia stretching eastwards from the Caspian Sea and from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific