Tibetan Folk Tales by A. L. Shelton (free biff chip and kipper ebooks TXT) 📖

race over these bridges. I’ll run over the one log, as it is shorter, and will be quicker, you run over the other built of two logs.”

The silly fellow heard them, came up and said, “Teach me what you have been saying and I will give you a gold piece.” So they taught him and he parted with another piece of his money.

He went on and saw two fellows fighting, and one of them said, “If you don’t behave I’ll send you to the official.” The fool asked to be taught that, and parted with his last gold piece.

Now, since his money was all gone, he decided to return to his own country. When he reached home, they were celebrating the wedding of the rich girl and her husband and the fool mixed with the crowd. The girl saw him and said, “It won’t do for me to go out, it will make him sad to see me.” But he saw her anyway, and as he had learned only four sentences he began to say the first one to her thus: “You’re a nice bird and your voice is beautiful. Why did you stop singing when I came near?”

She went into the house and said to her parents, “You know that half-witted fellow to whom you were going to marry me? Well, he is pretty sharp, I can tell you.” So they told her to bring him up to the top of the house and they would at least give him something good to eat.

Then he said his next sentence, “You she-fox, you’ve got mighty nice hair, and some day you will fall into my hands.” The bride ran and told her father and mother, “Oh, he was awfully fierce, you should have heard what he said to me.”

After a while, when they were all eating, there were not enough chopsticks to go round, so this fool got only one, but he ate his food quickly and said his third sentence, “When there are two bridges, one of one log and one of two logs, go over the one-log bridge, it is always the quickest.” The girl told her father and mother this and they concluded he wasn’t a fool at all. So when the guests were all gone and this man still remained, he said his last sentence, “If you treat me like this, I am going to take you to the official.” “This will never do, to have him take you to the official. He hasn’t said much to-day, but it has all been mighty smart; so we will give this other man a lot of money and send him back home, and keep this man for your husband.”

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THIRTY-NINE The Man and the Monkeys

The male deer from the top of the hill can see afar off. But the goose on her nest thinks only of the egg she covers.

Tibetan Proverb.

ONCE upon a time when the garden of Eden was in the world, a man traveling around the country found the garden and went in through the gateway. He thought it a very beautiful place. There was everything good to eat, cakes and candies and fruits of all kinds. He said to himself, “Here I’ll stay. I won’t have to work any more, for everything I need is here, so here I’ll remain.” He thought he would take a nap, and crawled up one of the big trees and went to sleep among the branches. But he slept too soundly and forgot he was up the tree, and went to turn over and tumbled into a lake. One of the monkeys in the forest saw him fall into the water and tried in every way to help him out, and finally said, “I’m too little. I can’t pull you out, but if I can grow big and strong I’ll be able to help you out.” So he began to exercise every day by picking up small stones, and then every day a little larger one, until finally he grew strong enough to lift a big stone, and so was able to get the man out of the water. After the man was rescued he didn’t feel very well and the monkey proposed that he exercise a while with the stones. He threw the stones about a while until he felt quite warm, then thought he’d go to sleep again, but this time he’d lie down on the ground. The monkeys were all in the trees talking and chattering, so he didn’t sleep very soundly. When he roused up he thought, “This is a beautiful place if there just wasn’t so many monkeys.” (I guess he forgot how much one of them had just helped him.) “If these monkeys would all die, I’d go home and get my family and stay here, because we wouldn’t have to work at all.”

By this time it was evening and the monkeys were all asleep in the trees. So he shook all the trees until the monkeys fell out on the ground and were killed by the fall. Then, quite well satisfied with himself, he started home to bring his family back to the garden to live. But on the way the monkey god, who looks after monkeys, good and bad, and knew the man had been mean to the monkeys when they had been kind to him, turned himself into a big snake, met him on the path and swallowed him.

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FORTY

The Story of the Tree of Life

If you do not quarrel you are safe—if you have no debts you will be rich.

Tibetan Proverb.

ONCE upon a time there was an old beggar dressed in rags and tatters, with wisps of gray hair about his face. He was so very old that it seemed he could have never been young, and never in all his life had he had a bath. This old beggar traveled everywhere asking for rice and tsamba and receiving more rice than he could eat he spread it out in the sun to dry and went on begging.

One day as his rice was drying a hundred parrots came along and ate it all up. When he came home he was angry and said, “Here I work every day, begging for a little food, and these old parrots come along and eat it all up.” So he planned to be revenged and made one hundred snares of bamboo, put them all around in the reeds and went off to beg again. When he returned, sure enough, he had caught the whole hundred in his snares. Among them happened to be the king of the parrots, who, before the old man came home, spoke to his companions, saying: “We are in a bad fix. He has caught us all and he’ll kill us every one. When we see him coming let us all hang down as though we are dead, then he will take us out of the snares and pitch us away. But the first one thrown must keep count, and as soon as one hundred are thrown he shall call out and we will all fly away. We must all lie perfectly still until the last one is thrown.”

Finally the old man came home with some rocks in the front of his gown to throw at the parrots, for he didn’t think they would all be dead, but when he saw them all hanging perfectly still he climbed up and began to throw them down. He had pitched down ninety-nine and was untying the string off the king’s leg when the rocks in his gown got in his way and he threw one of them down. As soon as it lit, away flew the ninety-nine.

“Huh, they were all fooling me, but I have one left and I’ll take a rock and kill him.” The parrot suddenly came to life and sticking up his thumb said, “Please don’t kill me, it is true we were very bad and did eat up your rice, but you are a good man, so don’t kill me, take me and sell me and you can get more than your price of the rice.”

So he tied a string around the parrot’s leg, took him to town and tried to sell him to a merchant. The beggar said he was a fine parrot and could talk, but he didn’t know what he was worth, so the merchant had better ask the parrot himself. The parrot answered that he was worth a lot of money and the merchant must pay the old man fifty taels of silver for him. The merchant gave the money to the old man, who almost died of joy to have so much money.

After the parrot had been with the merchant for two or three years he asked permission to visit his home and parents, as they were getting old. He said, “You treat me very nicely here and I love you, and I will soon come back again and bring you some nice fruit.”

The merchant took the chain off the parrot’s leg and let him go. He was gone two or three months, when one day he came, carrying some seeds in his mouth, and said, “Plant these seeds, and when you are old and eat of the fruit of this tree you will be young again. Plant the seed carefully, and in three years you will have plenty of fruit.” The merchant planted the seeds and at the end of three years, sure enough, there was much fruit. One day he was in his garden and one of the fruits had fallen to the ground, but he was afraid to eat it lest the parrot had thought of this as a scheme to kill him. That night a poisonous snake coiled around the fruit and slept. The next morning the merchant called his dog and showed him the fruit, which he ate, and which killed him immediately. The merchant knew now that the parrot had schemed to kill him, and poured hot water on him and scalded him to death.

Now in this country were two old people, very frail and too feeble to go out and beg, so they were about to starve to death. So the old man said one day, “Let’s eat some of this fruit; if it makes us young it’s all right, if it poisons and kills us, it doesn’t matter, as we are about to die anyway.” So they got their walking sticks and went slowly to the merchant and asked him for some of the fruit. He said, “You can’t eat that, for it will kill you at once.” They told him it didn’t matter, for they were about to starve to death anyway, and it was easier to take poison and die quickly. He finally gave them one each, they ate it and grew young at once. They were much pleased and almost worshiped the man. Then the merchant knew that something must have poisoned the fruit as it lay on the ground and he was grieved to think that he had killed his parrot.

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FORTY-ONE

The Story of the Man with the Goitre

A man without wickedness needs no punishment—without an ax no tree can be cut down.

Tibetan Proverb.

A LONG time ago, in a lonely country among the mountains, there lived a man with a big goitre on his neck, and he owned a cow. One day the cow wandered away. The man went out to find her, but had to go so far from home that he could not get back that night. Looking around he found two caves, one big one and one little one, and decided to spend the night in the little one.

As he went in and sat down cross-legged on the ground,