They say that coffee owes its existence to a goatherd named Kaldi, who lived in the highlands of Ethiopia long before anyone thought of writing such things down. One evening his goats refused to behave like sensible animals. Instead of settling down for the night, they leapt and capered in the moonlight, wide awake and visibly delighted with themselves, as though they had been let in on a joke that the rest of creation had missed. Kaldi, who had never seen them so lively, set about finding the cause, and it did not take him long: the goats had been feasting on the glossy red berries of a bush he had never noticed.
Being a curious young man, he tried a few berries himself. A pleasant restlessness crept through his limbs, and he felt that he could have walked until morning. Eager to share his discovery, he hurried to the monastery on the next hill and described everything to the abbot.
The abbot, a cautious man, was not charmed. Judging the berries dangerous, if not downright diabolical, he flung them into the fire. What happened next surprised everyone: in place of the stench of burning came a warm and astonishing fragrance, which filled the room and drew the monks to the hearth like moths. They raked the roasted beans from the embers, ground them and poured hot water over them. That, the legend insists, was the first cup of coffee, and the monks, who had always struggled to keep their eyes open through the long night prayers, took to it at once. Whether a word of this is true, nobody can say; but it has survived for centuries, which is more than can be said for most history, and it is certainly a story worth raising a cup to.