The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean

In a village an old woman had a dish of beans and meant to cook them. She made a fire on her hearth, and to make it burn better she lit it with a handful of straw. When she poured the beans into the pot, one dropped unnoticed to the floor and lay beside a straw. Soon a burning coal from the fire hopped down to them. The straw cried, “Dear friends, where do you come from?” The coal answered that she had sprung from the fire by good luck, or she would certainly have been burnt to ashes. The bean said she had escaped with a whole skin too; if the old woman had got her into the pot she would have been made into broth without mercy, like her comrades.

“And would a dry straw have fared better?” asked the straw. “The old woman has burnt all my brothers in her fire. She struck sixty at once and made them blaze; luckily I slipped through her fingers.”

“What should we do now to escape destruction?” said the coal. “I think,” said the bean, “since we have been so lucky as to escape, we should keep together like good companions. To be safe from further misfortune we should go away and travel to a foreign country.” The idea pleased the other two, so they set out together.

They soon came to a little brook. There was no bridge and no way to get over. The straw hit on a plan: she would throw herself across, and they could walk over upon her as on a bridge. So she stretched from bank to bank. The coal, who was of a fiery nature, stepped boldly onto the newly built bridge; but when she reached the middle and heard the water rushing below, she took fright, stood still, and dared not go farther. The straw began to burn, broke in two, and fell into the stream. The coal slipped after her, hissed as she reached the water, and gave up the ghost.

The bean, who had stayed cautiously on the shore, could not help laughing at the mishap: she laughed so hard that she burst. A travelling tailor happened to be resting by the brook; as he had a compassionate heart he took out needle and thread and sewed her together. The bean thanked him most prettily, but because the tailor used black thread, all beans since then have a black seam.

Where this story comes from

This short German nonsense tale comes from the Brothers Grimm and is not Indian. It is number 18 in Margaret Hunt’s 1884 translation, Strohhalm, Kohle und Bohne, and the text here follows the Gutenberg English taken from Taylor and Edwardes.

The source gives household materials voices and fears: the coal fears becoming ash, the bean fears the cooking pot, and the straw fears the fire. Their common wish to escape does not make them physically suited to every part of the same plan.

Its black-thread ending offers an imaginary explanation for a bean’s mark, not a botanical account.

Read the original: Grimms’ Fairy Tales, tr. Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes (Project Gutenberg #2591, The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean)

Best for ages 9–12 with an adult — two companions die and the third bursts before being sewn together; the ending is a fanciful explanation, not a fact about every bean.

Reading the story closely

The bridge fails through an interaction the companions overlook: burning coal and dry straw cannot safely stay together. The coal’s fear makes the delay worse, but calling the accident merely rashness misses the flaw in the plan itself. Meanwhile the bean is rescued by a stranger’s compassion after showing none to her companions.

Using drawings only, redesign the crossing so each traveller’s material properties are considered. Then compare the bean’s laughter with the tailor’s response. Why does the story save a character who has behaved unkindly? Help here is an act of compassion, not a reward for perfect conduct.

Talk about it

• How did the straw, the coal and the bean escape from the old woman’s fire?
• Why did the straw’s bridge plan go wrong?
• The bean laughed at her friends’ accident. Was that kind? What could she have done instead?

Related stories

• The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage — three unlikely Grimm housemates whose arrangement ends in deaths
• The Fox and the Grapes — a tiny Aesop fable with a big lesson about being a good loser
• The Elves and the Shoemaker — a kind Grimm shoemaker and the tiny helpers who sew for him at night