Rip Van Winkle era un simplón, que no se preocupaba de atender su granja o ver que su familia estuviera bien. Prefería pescar, pasar tiempo con los amigos o ayudar en las tareas de otras personas. Pero un día, mientras estaba en el bosque, se encuentra con un grupo de extraños personajes, que hacen que su vida cambie completamente. Un clásico de Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle.
Al final el vocabulario: henpecked, pliant, termagant.
Paragraphs
… In that same village, and in one of these very
houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and
weather-beaten), there lived, many years since, while the country was yet a
province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip
Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in
the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of
Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of
his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was,
moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient henpecked husband.
Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which
gained him such universal popularity; for those men are apt to be obsequious
and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their
tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable
in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain-lecture is worth
all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering.
A termagant wife may, therefore, in some
respects, be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, Rip Van Winkle was
thrice blessed.
Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among
all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his
part in all family squabbles, and never failed, whenever they talked those
matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van
Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he
approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to
fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and
Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a
troop of them hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a
thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him
throughout the neighborhood.
The great error in Rip’s composition was an
insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be for want
of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as
long and heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even
though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble…
His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if
they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness,
promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes, of his father. He was
generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother’s heels, equipped in a pair
of his father’s cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with
one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.
Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy
mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat
white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and
would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he
would have whistled life away, in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually
dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was
bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly
going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household
eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and
that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook
his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a
fresh volley from his wife, so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and
take to the outside of the house—the only side which, in truth, belongs to a
henpecked husband... (Rip Van Winkle,
by Washington Irving)Rip retado por su mujer
Vocabulario
Henpecked: dominated, bullied.
Pliant: impressionable.
Termagant:
a harsh-tempered or overbearing woman.
In the Middle
Ages, Termagant or Tervagant was the name given to a god which European Christians believed Muslims
worshipped.
De la web
Rip Van Winkle,
the story of the idler transformed into a cartoon. To share with your students!
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