Grimm's Household Tales

In a village lived a poor old woman who had gathered together a dishful of beans and wanted to cook them. So she made a fire on her hearth, and so that it would burn faster, she lit it with a handful of straw. When she was emptying the beans into the pan, one dropped without her noticing it and lay on the ground beside a straw, and soon afterward a burning coal from the fire leaped down to the two. Then the straw began to speak and said, “Dear friends, where did you come from?” The coal replied, “I fortunately sprang out of the fire, and if I had not escaped by sheer force, my death would have been certain—I would have been burned to ashes.” The bean said, “I too have escaped with a whole skin, but if the old woman had gotten me into the pan, I would 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 brothers 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 since we have so fortunately escaped death, we should keep together like good companions, and lest a new misfortune overtake us here, we should go away together and travel to a foreign country.”

The proposal pleased the other two, and they set out on their way together. Soon, however, they came to a little brook, and since there was no bridge or plank to walk on, they did not know how they were to get over it. The straw hit upon a good idea and said, “I will lay myself straight across, and then you can walk over 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 onto the newly built bridge. But when she had reached the middle and heard the water rushing beneath her, she was, after all, afraid, and she stood still and ventured no farther. The straw, however, began to burn, broke in two pieces, and fell into the stream. The coal slipped in 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 help laughing at the event; she was unable to stop and laughed so heartily that she burst. It would have been all over with her, too, if, by good fortune, a tailor who was traveling in search of work had not sat down to rest by the brook. Since he had a compassionate heart, he pulled out his needle and thread and sewed her together. The bean thanked him very prettily, but because the tailor used black thread, all beans since then have a black seam.