ThE STRAw, ThE COAL, AND ThE BEAN

BY THE BROTHERS GRIMM

Jakob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859): German authors. The Brothers Grimm, as they are familiarly called, wrote many learned scientific books, but they are best known to children by their collection of German fairy and folk stories.

1. In a village lived a poor old woman, who had gathered some beans and wanted to cook them. So she made a fire on her hearth, and that it might burn more quickly, she lighted it with a handful of straw.

2. When she was emptying the beans into the pan, one dropped without herobserving it and lay on the ground beside a straw. Soon afterwards a burning coal from the fire leaped down to the two.

3. Then the straw said: “Dear friends, whence do you come here?”

The coal replied: “I fortunately sprang out of the fire. If I hadnot escaped by main force my death would have been certain. I should have been burned to ashes.”

4. The bean said: “I, too, have escaped with a whole skin. But if the old woman had got me into the pan, I, like my comrades, should have been made into broth without any mercy.”

“And would a better fate have fallen to my lot?” said the straw. “The old woman has destroyed all mybrethren in fire and smoke; she seized sixty of them at once and took their lives. I luckily slipped through her fingers.

5. “But what are we to do now?” asked the coal.

“I think,” answered the bean, “that as we have so fortunately escaped death, we should keep together like good companions. Lest a newmischance should overtake us here, let us go away to a foreign country.”

6. This plan pleased the two others, and they set out on their way together. Soon, however, they came to a little brook, and, as there was no bridge, they did not know how they were to get over.

At last the straw said: “I will lay myself across, and then you can walk over on me as on a bridge.”

7. The straw, therefore, stretched herself from one bank to the other, and the coal, who was of animpetuous nature, tripped forward quite boldly on the newly built bridge. But when she reached the middle and heard the water rushing beneath her, she was, after all, frightened, and stood still.

8. The straw then began to burn, broke in two pieces, and fell into the stream. The coal slipped after her, hissed when she sank into the water, and breathed her last.

The bean, who had prudently stayed behind on the shore, could not help laughing at these events, and laughed so heartily that she burst.

9. It would have been all over with her also, if, by good fortune, a tailor who was traveling in search of work had not sat down to rest by the brook. Pitying the poor bean, he pulled out his needle and thread and sewed her together. She thanked him prettily, but, as the tailor used black thread, beans since then have a black seam.