Reading Notes: Week 14 Grim A


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Briar Rose


A king and queen couldn't have children, but she makes a wish and has a daughter. They invite the who kingdom and eleven fairies but forget the twelve. The last fairy curses the baby to prick her finger on a spindle and to sleep for eternity. The princess pricks her finger and sleeps for a hundred years until a boy appears and kisses her awake.

The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean


In a village, there was a poor old woman who cooked beans. So she made a fire on her hearth, and that it might burn the quicker, she lighted it with a handful of straw. When she emptied the beans into the pans, one dropped without her observing it and lay on the ground beside a straw. Soon, a lump of burning coal from the fire leaped down to the two.

Then the straw began and said: 'Dear friends, from whence do come here?'

The coal replied: ' I, fortunately, sprang out of the fire, and if I had not escaped by sheer force, my death would have been certain. I should've burnt to ashes.'

The bean said: 'I also escaped with whole skin, but if the old woman had got me into the pan, I should have been made into broth without any mercy, like my comrades.'

'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 at once and took their lives. I luckily slipped through her fingers.'

'But what are we to do now?' said the coal.

'I think,' answered the bean, 'that as we have so, fortunately, escaped death, we should keep together like a good companion and, lest a new mischance overtakes us here, we should go away together and repair to a foreign country.'

The proposition pleased the two others, and they set out on their way. Together.

Soon, however, they came to a little brook, and as there was no bridge or foo-plank, they did not know how to get over it.

The straw hit on a good idea and said: 'I will lay myself straight across then, you can walk over on me as on a bridge.' The straw, therefore, stretched itself from one bank to the other, and the coal, who was of an impetuous disposition, tripped quite boldly onto the newly-built bridge.

But when she had reached the middle and heard the water rushing beneath her, she was afraid and ventured no farther. The straw, however, began to burn, broke into two pieces, and fell into the stream. The coal slipped after her, hissed when she got into the water, and breathed her last.

The bean had prudently stayed behind on the shore. It laughed and couldn't stop, so heartily that she burst. It would have been all over with her if, by fortune, a tailor traveling in search of work had not sat down to rest by the brook. The tailor had a compassionate heart. He pulled out his needle and thread and sewed her together. The bean thanked him as the tailor used black thread. All beans since then have a black.


Bibliography: 


Briar Rose by Brothers Grimm.






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