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Grimms' Fairy Tales
Straw,
Coal, and Bean
In a village dwelt a poor old woman, who had
gathered together a dish of beans and wanted to cook them.
So she made a fire on her hearth, and that it might burn
the quicker, she lighted it with a handful of straw. When
she was emptying the beans into the pan, one dropped without
her observing it, and lay on the ground beside a straw,
and soon afterwards a burning coal from the fire leapt down
to the two. Then the straw began and said, "Dear friends,
from whence do you come here?" The coal replied, "I
fortunately sprang out of the fire, and if I had not escaped
by main force, my death would have been certain, -- I should
have been burnt to ashes." The bean said, "I too
have escaped with a whole skin, but if the old woman had
got me into the pan, I should have been made into broth
without any mercy, like my comrades." "And would
a better fate have fallen to my lot?" said the straw.
"The old woman has destroyed all my brethren in fire
and smoke; she seized sixty of them at once, and took their
lives. I luckily slipped through her fingers."
"But what are we to do now?" said the coal.
"I think," answered the bean, "that as we
have so fortunately escaped death, we should keep together
like good companions, and lest a new mischance should overtake
us here, we should go away together, and repair to a foreign
country."
The proposition pleased the two others, and they set out
on their way in company. Soon, however, they came to a little
brook, and as there was no bridge or foot-plank, they did
not know how they were to get over it. The straw hit on
a good idea, and said, "I will lay myself straight
across, and then you can walk over on me as on a bridge."
The straw therefore stretched itself from one bank to the
other, and the coal, who was of an impetuous disposition,
tripped quite boldly on to the newly-built bridge. But when
she had reached the middle, and heard the water rushing
beneath her, she was, after all, afraid, and stood still,
and ventured no farther. The straw, however, began to burn,
broke in two pieces, and fell into the stream. The coal
slipped after her, hissed when she got into the water, and
breathed her last. The bean, who had prudently stayed behind
on the shore, could not but laugh at the event, was unable
to stop, and laughed so heartily that she burst. It would
have been all over with her, likewise, if, by good fortune,
a tailor who was traveling in search of work, had not sat
down to rest by the brook. As he had a compassionate heart
he pulled out his needle and thread, and sewed her together.
The bean thanked him most prettily, but as the tailor used
black thread, all beans since then have a black seam.
From Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household Tales, trans. Margaret
Hunt (London: George Bell, 1884), 1:76-77. |
