"The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean" (german: Strohhalm, Kohle und Bohne) is the eighteenth story in Grimm's Fairy Tales. It is Aarne-Thompson number 295.

Synopsis

An old woman has some beans that she intends to cook over her fire. Being in a hurry, she grabs some

straw Straw is an agricultural byproduct consisting of the dry stalks of cereal plants after the grain and chaff have been removed. It makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has a number ...

to make the fire light faster. She pours the beans in the pot and, being in a hurry, she drops one on the floor which lands next to a piece of straw. Soon the fire is burning nicely and a hot

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

jumps out and lands next to the straw and the bean. They discuss that they have narrowly escaped the fire, and they band together to flee. At a river, the straw lies down to let them cross. The coal, being hot-tempered by nature, immediately sets across. But when the coal is halfway across, the water rushes underneath, and the coal becomes terrified of being drowned. So he stops, too afraid to go on. The straw catches on fire from the coal and splitting in two, the straw and the coal are swept downstream. The bean cannot help but laugh at the misfortune of his comrades, and indeed he laughs so hard that he bursts his side. He is in trouble, but luckily there is a friendly

tailor A tailor is a person who makes or alters clothing, particularly in men's clothing. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to the thirteenth century. History Although clothing construction goes back to prehistory, there is evidence of ...

nearby who sews him back up with some black thread, and ever since beans have had a black seam. Straw Coal And Bean 2 By Walter Crane

Variants

Japanese scholar Kunio Yanagita listed some variants of ''The Charcoal, The Straw, and the Bean'' (''Sumi to wara to mame'', ''Sumi to warashibe to mame'') found in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, and even remarked that it was part of a group of tales speculated to have been imported into Japan.Yanagita, Kunio; Translated by Fanny Hagin Meyer (1986). ''Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale''. Indiana University Press. pp. xxiii, 280-281. .

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Straw, the Coal, and the Bean Straw, the Coal, and the Bean Straw, the Coal, and the Bean Straw, the Coal, and the Bean ATU 275-299