The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean by Brothers Grimm [PDF]

Information: The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean

• Author: Brothers Grimm
• Publication Date: 1812
• Main Characters:
  • The Straw: An escaped piece of straw that volunteers to serve as a bridge across a brook. Overconfident in its own strength, it catches fire and breaks apart.
  • The Coal: A burning coal that escaped the kitchen fire. Impulsive and fearful, it panics on the straw bridge and causes the disaster.
  • The Bean: A bean that avoided being cooked. She laughs at her companions' misfortune until she bursts, but is saved by a tailor's kindness.
  • The Tailor: A compassionate traveler who finds the burst bean and sews her back together with black thread, giving beans their characteristic seam.
  • The Old Woman: The woman who lights the kitchen fire to cook her beans, setting the entire chain of events in motion.
• Brief Summary: An old woman lights a fire with straw to cook her beans. A straw, a coal, and a bean all escape the kitchen and decide to travel together. They reach a brook with no bridge. The straw stretches across as a crossing, but the coal panics midway, the straw catches fire, and both fall into the water. The bean laughs so hard at their misfortune that she bursts open. A kind tailor passing by sews her up with black thread, and ever since, beans have had a black seam.
• Thematic Analysis: At its core, this tale warns against laughing at the misfortune of others. The bean survives the dangerous crossing only to nearly destroy herself through mockery. The story also explores how impulsiveness leads to disaster: the coal acts without thinking, the straw overestimates its own strength, and the bean lacks compassion. Yet the ending is forgiving. A stranger shows kindness, and the bean gets a second chance. The Grimms use humor and a simple etiological structure (explaining why something in nature looks the way it does) to deliver a moral about empathy, caution, and the value of helping others.
• Historical Context: This story was part of the first edition of "Kinder- und Hausmarchen" (Children's and Household Tales) published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1812. The original title was "Strohhalm, Kohle und Bohne auf der Reise." The source was Dorothea Catharina Wild, the mother of Wilhelm Grimm's future wife. By the 1837 edition, the Grimms revised and expanded the tale into the version most readers know today. As an etiological tale (one that explains natural phenomena through fiction), it belongs to a long tradition found across European and Asian folklore. The ATU 295 classification links it to similar bean-seam stories from other cultures.