In the American legend that bears his name, Rip Van Winkle, an 18th century settler of Dutch stock, falls asleep for 20 years only to find, when he wakes up, that a revolution has taken place, his country is now a republic and, instead of King George, a portrait of George Washington hangs in the local inn.
It is not generally known that a descendant of the legendary hero, Rip Van Winkle IV, a correspondent for a leading US newspaper, dozed off under a tree on the banks of the River Lagan after some overindulgence at a Christmas party in 1999. He woke up in AD 2015 and, guiltily checking the headlines, discovered that the main news story of the day was the retirement party of Mr Martin McGuinness, on the occasion of his 65th birthday, after 15 years as Minister for Education.
He decided to cover the event for his newspaper (now an Internet-only production) and managed to wangle an invitation to the ceremony. Van Winkle, whose reportage of Hillary Clinton's successful presidential campaign the following year would win him a Pulitzer Prize, arrived just in time to see the Minister accepting his gold watch from the Permanent Secretary of the Department.
In his valedictory address, the revolutionary-cum-administrator was moved to reflect on his tenure in a job which had started off so controversially, yet lasted longer than anyone expected. Like other rebels who took the political road, he found that the democratic process can often be slow and frustrating: for every achievement, there is a counterbalancing setback and triumph and failure are but two sides of the same coin.
Van Winkle mingled with the guests at the farewell party, some of them staring impolitely at his long growth of beard and quaint millennium tie. Both the Minister and the Permanent Secretary had opened their remarks in an unfamiliar language, which one of the other guests told him was Irish. There had also been a few sentences in Ulster-Scots. Some of the older civil servants smiled as they recalled how the Minister (whom they all referred to as "Mairtin") had tried to reassure the majority community. He had done this by pointing out that Scots-Gaelic was a dialect of the same language and the majority of speakers were Protestants.
As he spoke, the Minister's eyes misted over as he recalled his first day in the job and how he sat in his unionist colleague, Michael McGimpsey's chair by mistake, provoking a humorous remark from the then-First Minister, David Trimble. Van Winkle had missed by some years the retirement party of Mr Trimble and, earlier still, the Deputy First Minister, Seamus Mallon.
Then, too, there had been nostalgia and many a good-humoured quip about the trials and tensions of those first few weeks in office. There were blank looks from the younger people at Trimble's farewell bash when he turned to his long-time colleague and sparring partner to say: "Do you remember all that dreadful fuss over decommissioning, Seamus?"
Mallon's face momentarily clouded over as he replied: "Do I remember? Will I ever forget?"
The McGuinness retirement party was winding down and nobody was left except two young bureaucrats from Ballymena who were exchanging yarns about the craic during an immersion course in the Donegal Gaeltacht. A man with a Derry accent invited Van Winkle to join the Minister at another event, in west Belfast. He found himself at the Felons Club on the Falls Road, operated by former republican prisoners, where McGuinness's erstwhile comrades in the 30-year campaign to smash the northern state and drive the British army out of Northern Ireland were making a presentation to their old leader.
Gerry Adams had travelled specially from Dublin for the occasion, momentarily neglecting his other duties which included being a TD for a Dublin working-class constituency, leader of Sinn Fein at Leinster House and Stormont and travelling ambassador for the republican cause. There were embraces and rebel songs and many reminiscences of the previous 20-odd years, going back all the way to the first IRA ceasefire of 1994.
Van Winkle noticed that nobody talked about the peace process any more. In a special TV programme about young people and how they had fared under the Minister's stewardship, students emerging from university classes told reporters: "We don't have a peace process - we have peace."
They found the expression quaint, just as they were bemused by their parents' habit of referring to their college as Queen's. Hadn't Mum and Dad noticed that, in 2005, the name was changed in honour of two great poets from the different traditions, to Heaney-Hewitt University?
Mum and Dad also kept talking about the time when Dublin was more exciting than Belfast. The old pair were so nineties in their outlook. Didn't they remember how a building and entertainment boom took off with the establishment of the new institutions in the North? Even before the Good Friday Agreement was signed there had been a steady trickle of new restaurants, boutiques and discos opening all over town. With the advent of peace and stability, Belfast became the city that never sleeps, Barcelona on the Lagan.
There had been unexpected developments on the political landscape as well. All the main parties had lost old members and gained new ones. Some unionists had converted to constitutional nationalism and this was reciprocated by a number of nationalists who decided to throw in their lot with modernising unionism.
There was a new left-wing party composed of former republican and loyalist activists which brought a neo-Marxist perspective to the political scene and had revived an old slogan from the 1930s: Break the Connection with Capitalism. There were sadly still pockets of bigotry and hatred, the legacy of 300 years of history, but the new power-sharing administration had launched a 10-year plan to eradicate sectarianism, focusing on an annual Festival of Cultural Reconciliation in Portadown.
Nobody could remember now how the decommissioning issue had been resolved. There had been a Canadian general with a Huguenot name - de Chastelain, that was it - who had come up with some ingenious formula involving a late-night visit to an IRA arms dump to witness what was described as "a gesture of reconciliation, not surrender", which took place simultaneously with the withdrawal of all British army units from the North, including those with permanent bases there.
Security was now a matter for the cross-community police force which had taken the place of the old RUC. Difficulties over what to call the new body had been resolved by cross-community means and the Carson-Pearse Constabulary (CPC) pounded the beat all over the six counties. In addition, a statue of Padraig Pearse shaking hands with Edward Carson now graced the exterior of Stormont's Parliament Buildings and there were lots of waggish remarks about two Dubliners lording it over the Belfast landscape.
The Border between North and South, which so many had died to remove or protect, was now as faded as an old road-marking on a country byway. Britain's adoption of the euro during Tony Blair's second term and her decision to replace miles with kilometres had done more to get rid of the Border than any bomb or bullet. A television reporter had generated great amusement by asking local farmers which side of the Border they lived on: nobody knew any more because the road signs on both sides were not only metric but bilingual at this stage.
It wasn't all good news. Paramilitary violence declined but non-political crime soared, until security powers were devolved to the Stormont Assembly and the Carson-Pearse Constabulary launched a major crackdown. There was also some cultural disorientation at the start of the new era: poets could no longer rely on the Troubles for an automatic hearing and journalists had difficulty focusing on the minutiae of such issues as road safety, hospital waiting lists and the value of the 11-plus. Nobody could remember the last time a foreign camera crew with a satellite dish was parked outside Stormont.
Adams and McGuinness had become elder statesmen of their movement but were still promoting the same aims. Republicans felt the time was right for a referendum on the constitutional link with Britain but there were some who thought the result might go against them. Moderate nationalists argued for leaving well enough alone - the Border was an irrelevance and, as Van Winkle's fellow-Americans would say: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
There was such a buzz in the North that Rip Van Winkle IV thought he was back in his native New York. All the energies which had gone into defending or attacking the Union were now harnessed in the joint effort to make a better life for all. The slogans, A United Ireland or Nothing and No Surrender, had been replaced by the French Revolution's motto of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
How would it all turn out? Van Winkle smiled as he recalled Zhou-en-Lai's answer when asked about the impact of the same French Revolution: "It's too early to say."