Translations:History of coffee/20/en

Legendary accounts

There are several legendary accounts of the origin of the consumption of coffee. According to one legend, ancestors of today's Kafficho people in the Kingdom of Kaffa were the first to recognize the energizing effect of the coffee plant. One account involves a 9th-century Ethiopian goatherder, Kaldi, who, noticing the energizing effects when his flock nibbled on the bright red berries of a certain bush, chewed on the fruit himself. His exhilaration prompted him to bring the berries to a monk in a nearby monastery. But the monk disapproved of their use and threw them into the fire, from which an enticing aroma billowed, causing other monks to come and investigate. The roasted beans were quickly raked from the embers, ground up, and dissolved in hot water, yielding the world's first cup of coffee. Since this story is not known to have appeared in writing before Rome-based Maronite Faustus Nairon's De Saluberrima potione Cahue seu Cafe nuncupata Discurscus in 1671, 800 years after it was supposed to have taken place, it is highly likely to be apocryphal.