19. A Rip Van Winkle Story

19. A Rip VAN WINKLE STORY (42)

(EUROPEAN STORY)

A person who was traveling about heard someone crying. When he got to the place from which the noise came he saw a number of snakes--a number of rattlesnakes--come together, and one snake said to him, "We are gathered together to consider the fact that human beings are killing us. We are considering what to do. And we have picked out the chief's daughter. The girl sits upstairs and we have chosen one person (snake) to wait at the bottom of the stairs. When that girl comes down he will strike her and she will cry out. When she runs back, do you run to the place, pick up the person that struck her and throw him into a thicket. After you have done that go wherever you choose but do not come back here."

The man started off and waited about, not forgetting what they had told him. While he waited near the chief's house, the snake waited at the bottom of the stairs as had been arranged--and when the chief's daughter came down it struck her and the girl cried out. When she ran back that man went to the place, found the snake running along, and seized it. He ran with it to a thicket and threw it in, and when the people looked for it they could not find it. When they stopped hunting for it that man continued in the same place. After a time he thought of the place where he had seen the snakes long before. "I wonder what has become of them," he thought, and he started out to look. When he got there he saw the reptiles there as formerly and a snake said to him, "You have come back, although we told you not to." When the snake said that, that man discovered that he was walking about as a very old man.

This is the way it has been told.