The Story of the Beggar

Tibetan Folk Tales, by A.L. Shelton, [1925], at sacred-texts.com

p. 166

FORTY-TWO

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.