Tibetan Folk Tales - The Beggar Story

An old man and a bat never grow old.

But an old woman has to find comfort in the Juniper.

( Juniper is burned to the gods.)

~Tibetan Proverb.

ONCE upon a time there was a beggar, with hair in twisted wisps, dirty, dirty face and hands and a few rags for clothing, who begged from the people of the village for his living.

On one lucky day he had succeeded in begging about a bushel of barley. He took it home with him, put it in a sack and tied it up to the ceiling to the cross poles of his little hut, so the rats couldn't get it, and then lay down upon his bundle of rags to sleep.

He began to count how rich he would be if he got a bushel of barley every day. He could afford him a wife. When he got a wife he would have a son, and he wondered and wondered what he should name his boy. Toward morning the light from the moon fell upon his bed and wakened him and gave him a brilliant thought. He would name his son Däwä Dräbä, which means the light of the moon; he was so pleased he jumped up from his bed, dancing around the room, flourishing his beggar's staff in his glee.

But alas, he flourished it a bit too fiercely, for it struck his big bag of barley, which fell on him and killed him, and the father of Däwä Dräbä was dead.

Found in: Tibetan Folk Tales

Don't you just love those old folk tales? Nobody ever lives happily ever after! And if that doesn't float your boat, maybe this Morning Coffee post from way back when will do the trick. Interesting how the illustrations are so similar!