Stone soup

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Stone Soup is also the name of a comic strip.

The fable of the stone soup is about co-operation amid scarcity.

1 Story
2 Interpretation and lessons
3 Uses in popular culture
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Story

According to the story, some travellers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travellers. The travellers fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire in the village square. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travellers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which they are missing. The villager doesn't mind parting with just a little bit to help them out, so it gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travellers again mention their stone soup which hasn't reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, all adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all. The stone may or may not be reused in the next soup, and is not eaten.

This fable can be thought of as "The Emperor's New Clothes" in reverse, where nothing is revealed to be something, after all. The original stone was only a pretext to start the villagers sharing in a way that they would not have considered without the catalyst of the "stone soup" that they thought they were improving.

According to Portuguese tradition, the events described in the "stone soup" tale took place around Almeirim, Portugal. To this day, there's hardly a restaurant in Almeirim which doesn't serve stone soup ("sopa de pedra").

The story is also known as Nail soup in Scandinavian and Northern European countries. In these versions, the main character is typically a tramp looking for food and lodgings, who convinces an old woman that he'll make nail soup for the both of them if she'd just add a few ingredients for the garnish. In Eastern Europe the variation of the story (having more in common with the Northern European rendition) is called Axe Soup, with an axe being the catalyst.

[edit] Interpretation and lessons

We can all work together, co-operate and end up better off.
If you want to get people to do something, don't tell them how desperately they are needed. Don't try to appeal to their sympathy and kindness. Instead, create the impression that you are giving them the opportunity to be part of your success.

In her essay "Stone Soup", Barbara Kingsolver denounces the fairy tale of Cinderella in favor of stone soup. She begins with an anecdote about a soccer game in which her best friend's son played, with his mother, father, stepmother and stepsiblings all there to cheer him on, and states, "I dare anybody to call this a broken home." Her message is that society must "let go the fairy tale of families functioning perfectly in isolation", likening the situation to stone soup because one must make the best with what one has. She uses the concept of a binuclear family as an example of how families will function better if they dispense with their ego ideal mentalities and accept reality.

Kingsolver's essay, though targeted to American families, applies to many other industrialized nations. Her model is one where a family comprises an empty pot and whatever the family members add to it; much like the concept of a glass being half empty or half full, she submits that one must make the best of what one has. Thus, there is nothing wrong with a divorced family or one where a nanny or relative cares for the children. The rock embodies hardships, while the fruits of the villagers' labor are the effort each member of the family adds to the pot, and the end result – a "bouillabaisse" as Kingsolver puts it – is whatever one makes of it.

[edit] Uses in popular culture

An episode of Land of the Lost is titled "Stone Soup", and features a storyline making use of this fable.
An episode of Little House on the Prairie also makes use of the fable in its storyline.
The story was adapted for an episode of Jim Henson's The Storyteller written by Anthony Minghella, entitled "A Story Short".
An affiliation of Cooperative Houses in Chicago, founded in 1997, has the name Stone soup cooperative.
The free Fractint software was written by the "Stone Soup Group", named after this fable. Copyleft endeavours, including the GNU project and Wikipedia, can also be regarded as embodying the stone soup principle.
Stone Soupercomputer, a very powerful supercomputer cluster, is made up of discarded desktops.
Stone Soup is the name of a group of story tellers on the Barbican, Plymouth.
An episode of Will and Grace has the title characters putting on a children's play of the story.