Traditional Tibetan Folk Tales

Tibetan Folk Tales - A.L. Shelton

Albert L. Shelton was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on June 9th 1875, his parents soon after moved to Kansas where Shelton grew up. Shelton spent more than twenty years in Kham as a medical missionary and was particularly well respected among the Tibetans there but on a high mountain pass in 1922 Shelton was shot, apparently by a bandit, and died at the age of 46.  In 1923, Shelton’s widowed wife Flora published a biography on the life of her late husband entitled Shelton of Tibet. Then in 1925 Flora also compiled and published a collection forty-nine tales that had been gathered by Shelton during his trips among Tibetans.

The little stories in this book are told as the people sit around their boiling tea made over a three stone camp-fire. They are handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter, and though often filled with their superstitious beliefs, through them all run a vein of humor and the teachings of a moral truth which is quite unexpected.