The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean

In a village lived a poor old woman. She had gathered a dish of beans and wanted to cook them. So she made a fire on her hearth, and to make it burn faster, she lit it with a handful of straw. As she poured the beans into the pan, one bean fell without her noticing and lay on the ground next to a straw. Soon after, a burning coal from the fire jumped down to join them.

Then the straw spoke: "Dear friends, where do you come from?" The coal replied, "I luckily jumped out of the fire. If I hadn't escaped with all my strength, I would have burned to ashes." The bean said, "I, too, escaped with my whole skin.

But if the old woman had got me into the pan, I would have been made into broth without mercy, like my comrades." "And would my fate have been any better?" said the straw. "The old woman destroyed all my brothers in fire and smoke.

She grabbed sixty of them at once and took their lives. I luckily slipped through her fingers."

"But what shall we do now?" asked the coal. "I think," answered the bean, "since we have so luckily escaped death, we should stick together like good friends. Let's go to a faraway country, so no new disaster can find us here."

The other two agreed, and they set off together. Soon they came to a small stream. There was no bridge or plank, so they didn't know how to cross. The straw had a good idea: "I will lie across the stream, and you can walk over me as on a bridge." So the straw stretched from one bank to the other.

The coal, who was bold and impatient, stepped carefully onto the new bridge. But when she reached the middle and heard the water rushing beneath, she got scared, stopped, and did not dare go further. The straw began to burn, broke in two, and fell into the stream.

The coal slid after her, hissed when she hit the water, and breathed her last.

The bean, who had wisely stayed on the shore, couldn't help laughing. She laughed so hard that she burst. That would have been the end of her, too, if a tailor traveling in search of work hadn't sat down to rest by the stream. He had a kind heart, so he pulled out his needle and thread and sewed the bean back together. The bean thanked him politely, but since the tailor used black thread, all beans ever since have a black seam.