AN ANCIENT RIP VAN WINKLE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1787, 12 November 1879, Page 2

AN ANCIENT RIP VAN WINKLE.

University Magazine. ;’J Bpinmenides is the original of Bip Van Winkle, whom Washington Irving and Jefferson have made so real to ns. It is told of him that once, when he was sent hy his father into the fields to look for a sheep, he at midday turned out of the road, and lay down in a cave and fell asleep. Whether the cave was impregnated with gas such as helped the priestesses of the oracle into their trance, tradition does not say ; but Epimenides slept for seven-and-fifty years. It is curious to think of this in connection with the fact that at the present day scientific theories should be put forward upon the possibility of prolonged suspension of animation by refrigeration, dessication, or otherwise. When we think of the various animals that hibernate, and of those that are dormant for indefinite periods, we may reasonably allow that, for an occasional human of exceptional characteristics to suffer suspension of physical functions, may, however extraordinary, be yet an occurrence on the beleivable side of the borders of the marvellous. When Bpimenides awoke, he went on looking for the stray sheep, thinking he had been taking a noonday nap ; but, as ho could not find that long defunct animal, he went back through the field, where he found everything changed, and the estate in another person’s possession. In great perplexity he came back again to the city, and, as he was going to his own house, he met certain folk who inquired of him who he was. At last he found his young brother, who had now become an old man, and from him ho learned all the truth. The theory must have been that such a sleep betokened the prophetic faculty, and that Bpimenides had been a visitor to the Olympian halls while his body lay sealed from his use; for when ha was recognised he became regarded as a person especially beloved by the gods. He was, as K. O. Muller gathers from the ancient sources of information, “ A man of sacred and marvellous nature, who was brought up by the nymphs, and whose soul quitted his body as long and often as it pleased; according to the opinion of Plato and other ancients, his mind had a prophetic and im pired sense of divine things."