The most popular legend about coffee in Ethiopia usually goes something like this: Kaldi, an Abyssinian goatherd from Kaffa, was herding his goats through a highland near a monastery. He noticed that they were behaving very strangely that day and had started jumping around in an excited manner, barking loudly and practically dancing on their hind legs. He discovered that the source of the excitement was a small bush (or, according to some legends, a small cluster of bushes) with bright red berries. Curiosity took over, and he tried the berries himself.
Like his goats, Kaldi felt the invigorating effects of the coffee berries. After filling his pockets with the red berries, he hurried home to his wife, and she advised him to go to the nearby monastery to share these "heavenly" berries with the monks there.Upon arrival at the monastery, Kaldi's coffee beans were met not with joy, but with contempt. A monk called Kaldi's abundance "the work of the devil" and threw it into the fire. According to legend, however, the smell of the roasted beans was enough to make the monks give this novelty a second chance. They took the coffee beans out of the fire, crushed them to put out glowing coals, and covered them with hot water in a pitcher to preserve them (or so the story goes).
All the monks in the monastery smelled the coffee and came to try it. Like the tea-drinking Buddhist monks of China and Japan, these monks found coffee's invigorating effects beneficial in keeping them awake during their spiritual practice (in this case, prayer and devotions). They vowed that from then on they would drink this newfound drink every day as a support for their religious devotions.
There is an alternative origin myth of coffee that attributes the discovery of coffee to a man named Omar, who lived as a hermit in Mocha, Yemen.