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 her observing 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 had not 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 my brethren in fire and smoke; she seized sixty of them at once and took their lives. I luckily slipped through her fingers."