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The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean
Straw, coal and bean on the run - 2 former die, bean bursts, gets stitched. This explains black stitching on beans.
In a village lived a poor old woman who had gathered a dish of beans and wanted to cook them. So she built a fire on her stove, and to make it burn faster, she lit it with a handful of straw. As she poured the beans into the pot, one of them fell unnoticed and came to rest on the floor next to a straw; soon after, a glowing coal also jumped down from the stove to the two of them. Then the straw started and spoke "dear friends, from where do you come?" The coal answered "I have sprung from the fire to good fortune, and if I had not carried it through by force, death was certain to me: I would have been burned to ashes." The bean said "I also escaped with my skin intact, but if the old woman had put me in the pot, I would have been boiled to a pulp without mercy, like my comrades." "Would I have had a better fate?" said the straw, "all my brothers have gone up in fire and smoke, sixty at a time she has seized and killed. Fortunately, I slipped through her fingers." "But what shall we do now?" spoke the coal. "I mean," replied the bean, "because we have so happily escaped death, let us keep together as good fellows and, lest another misfortune befall us here, let us emigrate together and go to a foreign land."
The other two liked the suggestion, and they set off together. Soon, however, they came to a small stream, and since there was no bridge or footbridge, they did not know how to get across. The straw found good advice and said, "I will lie across, so you can cross on me as on a bridge." So the straw stretched from one bank to the other, and the coal, which was of a hot nature, also tripped quite boldly onto the newly built bridge. But when it came to the middle of the bridge and heard the water rushing underneath it, it became frightened: it stopped and did not dare to go any further. The straw, however, began to burn, broke into two pieces and fell into the stream: the coal slipped, hissed as it entered the water and gave up the ghost. The bean, which had carefully remained on the bank, had to laugh at the story, could not stop and laughed so hard that it burst. Now it was all over for her, too, if it hadn't been for the good fortune of a tailor who was wandering about, resting by the stream. Because he had a compassionate heart, he took out needle and thread and sewed them together. The bean thanked him most beautifully, but since he had used black thread, all beans since then have a black seam.