My good friend David and I have been meeting every week for breakfast since he and his family returned to Nashville in 2003. Until it closed, our favorite haunt was a quasi-French bakery cafe in one of our favorite parts of town. And David loved the coffee they served (many of you will remember I'm a hard core tea drinker myself), a brand called Dancing Goats.
You might be familiar with the legend that goes with the name: most versions place it in 9th century Ethiopia, then called Abyssinia. One day a young goatherd named Kaldi noticed his goats behaving a little strangely -- they seemed so much more energetic than usual, they were practically dancing. Upon further observation, Kaldi noticed the goats were eating red berries from an unfamiliar bush. He decided to try them himself and quickly became the happiest goatherd around.
Many versions also mention Kaldi sharing the news of the wonder berries with a local monk, who decided to try boiling the berries and drinking the resulting beverage. Still another story has one monk discarding Kaldi's find -- literally -- into the fire. The other monks started asking what the fragrant aroma was, and voilà, the first cup of coffee was born from the roasted beans.
It's interesting that all the versions I've found agree on three things: the goatherd's name, his home country, and the century the story is set. It's also interesting that the first written account we know of is not till 1671.
How and whenever this discovery was made, it changed the course of history -- and apparently the prayer life of more than one monk.