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SALT Stories, Folktales, Folklore, Fairy Tales, Legends, Myths, History, Nursery Rhymes, Fantasy & Facts Scroll down or click on your choice below • SOS: Searching Out Stories/Info - Salt Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians |
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SOS: SEARCHING OUT STORIES AND INFORMATION ABOUT SALT
Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians
(excerpts from Storytell posts plus original research)
Book titles and online links are in blue and underlined. Click on them for more information.
Story titles are in quotation marks.
To retell these stories, get permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain.
Storytell posts are added chronologically as they are received by Story Lovers World.
1) "Salt on a Magpie's Tale" (an adaptation of a Swedish folktale) is on our own Eldrbarry's website http://www.eldrbarry.net/
2) Extensive information about salt:
http://www.saltinstitute.org/
3) Plus the following "salt" folktales can be found at
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/salt.html
1. "To Love My Father All" (from The Tragedy of King Lear by William Shakespeare)
2. "Cap o' Rushes" (England)
3. "Sugar and Salt" (England)
4. "As Dear as Salt" (Germany)
5. "The Necessity of Salt" (Austria)
6. "The Most Indispensable Thing" (Germany)
7. "Water and Salt" (Italy)
8. "The King and His Daughters" (India)
9. "The Goose-Girl at the Well" (Germany, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm)
4) Also: A Philosophical Chinese Story about the Discovery of Salt (from "Tell Me a Story").
http://www.soupsong.com/
5) "The Gulls of Salt Lake" (provided by Rick Walton's Online Library) — use Rick's google search, it turns up over 100 stories about salt.
http://www.rickwalton.com/folktale/bryant35.htm
6) Accidentally ran across these wonderful Cambodian folktales: There's salt in there and a tiger in there, but not together. Still, they are worth reading.
http://tiny.cc/UOee3
7) This is a great site for food trivia and stories. One story I use to open my Researching Stories on the Internet Workshop I found on this site. It is a Chinese Legend about the discovery of salt:
"Soup of the Evening...Beautiful Soup"
http://www.soupsong.com/
8) QUERY:
I am reading King Lear with my Shakespeare class, for the first time in several years. I mentioned to them the fairy tale connection to the young woman who loves her father "as fresh meat loves salt" but I can't remember or find the story. Any ideas??
RESPONSES:
a) It's a VERY OLD folk motif that turns up in literally hundreds of variants of the "Cinderella" tale. The basic story: Ungrateful or foolish father thinks third daughter doesn't love him, because her older sisters love him like gold or silver and she "as meat loves salt." There's generally a happy ending: She gets the man she she loves, and her father, who is served meat without salt at dinner, learns a lesson. Shakespeare chose to eliminate the happy ending, killing off Cordelia in what, to me, smacked of plot device.
b) Ah, but as I tell my students, it is a tragedy. One of my college professors told of an older man weeping through the first part of their production of King Lear. The man didn't return from intermission. The professor found out that the man had deeded his home and property to his children, who were not treating him well; the play was too close to his reality. I think the moral of the story is -- don't give the kids the house!
c) Go here for ten varients of the tale - "Love Like Salt": http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/salt.html
d) He certainly is doing that, and the fool and Kent both make that point clearly. Of course, there are also lessons in greed and jealousy with Goneril and Regan. . . . and how hard it is to be really sure which is the "good child." It's a rich mixture of evil and foolish decisions. When the Rep performed Lear two years ago, the director, for whatever odd reason, decided that there had to be an explanation for the Fool's disappearance from the scene, so he had Lear kill the Fool! One of my bright students pointed out that it couldn't have been Shakespeare's intent, as he always has characters talk about the killings for at least a page or two before and after. I've almost forgiven them for that travesty, only because they've done such a good job with "Metamorphosis" and "My Fair Lady" this year.
9) QUERY:
I've got several versions of "Why the Sea is Salt" -- the story about the magic mill that won't stop grinding salt, filling up a boat, sinking the boat, and is still grinding today -- and am looking for more.
RESPONSES:
a) There is one adaptation by Jay O'Callahan in Ready-To-Tell Tales (American Storytelling)
by Holt and Mooney.
Here is one from Korea: Hangul / Literature / "Why the Sea Is Salty" - http://tiny.cc/UWeGk. And another from the Orkney Islands: Orkneyjar - "The Enchanted Quernstone" - http://www.orkneyjar.com/folklore/pentland.htm. Hamilton and Weiss have one in their book: How & Why Stories (World Storytelling from August House)
.
b) Have you got Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth
? This book is ostensibly all about that story - the mill belongs to Hamlet, or Shakespeare's inspiration for him, Amleth, in Danish mythology. This book is one of the most complex and awe-inspiring I've ever read. It shows the detailed cosmological teachings hidden in the tale, and how this secret knowledge of things that are generally assumed to have only been discovered long after was disseminated in versions of the story present in just about every culture. The book gives numerous examples of the story, though not usually the whole texts themselves. One of the main strands is the version in the The Kalevala: An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition by Elias Lonnrot (Oxford World's Classics)
, the treatment of which in the book inspired me to tell the tale of the Sampo (the mill) - it's a half-hour powerful tale that I still love to tell. Hamlet's Mill is an absolute classic, though much misunderstood by most who read it. It is a serious work, not a new-age romp, published in the '50s and it's still in print. Authors are Hertha von Dechend and someone Santillana.
c) Oh my! You have certainly opened up the possibilities with these suggestions! And, I can see that I may not have the heart to bang together a superficial version by next week, which was my original fantasy, because there is something major going on here. Of course, the The Kalevala: An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition by Elias Lonnrot (Oxford World's Classics) is a revisionist work, and I really must read about its construction to understand Lonnrot's original sources and motivation. And I had never heard of "Hamlet's Mill."
d) As I understand it, which is only vaguely, Lonnrot took all the material from oral songs and attempted to rationalise them into a cohesive order. I don't think he added or changed a great deal, only tried to give them one single narrative flow. These various songs were genuine sources for the ancient mythology, but being mythology there were variations in some details and in what episodes were included or not. I'm sure Neppe can tell us more. I think Hamlet's Mill itself may have something to say on the matter. So essentially the story of the Sampo in the Kalevala is I believe a genuinely very old story, though there are probably variations between the various old Finnish sources. Once you start reading "Hamlet's Mill" you'll see that most of the elements of the story are pretty unvarying right across the world, which is not surprising given that it had a technically specific (and accurate) esoteric message about the structure of the cosmos and so would not have been messed with. "And I had never heard of "Hamlet's Mill". You may wish you still hadn't once you get stuck into it! It's very exciting, but mind-boggling in its sheer scope.
e) About the "Kalevala," Tim said: "As I understand it, which is only vaguely, Lonnrot took all the material from oral songs and attempted to rationalise them into a cohesive order."When King Alfonso X the Wise wrote the first history of Spain in Spanish, Estoria de España, in the 13th century, he used both folk and literary "romances" -- narrative ballads on historical topics -- as some of his main sources. Padre Juan de Mariana leaned heavily on Alfonso's history for his Historia General de España (1592). When he recounted some of the legends, he distanced himself by saying that he wasn't sure if they were true, but as a conscientious historian he couldn't leave anything out; readers could decide for themselves what was factual. As a result, major sequences of events have come down to us inextricably mixed with no way of knowing how much was political spin.
10) "A Handful Of Salt"
Story:
An aging Hindu master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and so, one morning, sent him for some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.
"How does it taste?" the master asked.
"Bitter," spit the apprentice.
The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, "Now drink from the lake." As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the master asked,
"How does it taste?",
"Fresh," remarked the apprentice.
"Do you taste the salt?" asked the master.
"No," said the young man.
At this, the master sat beside this serious young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering,
"The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains exactly the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things . . .Stop being a glass. Become a lake."
Karen C. 5/7/05
11) "Sari Saltik: A Bektashi Story"
There was in Dobruja a seven-headed dragon, to which the two daughters of the King were allotted as food. Sari Saltik (who had been sent to the region by Hajji Bektash himself) agreed to deliver the girls if their father would embrace Islam. He went to the column to which they were tied as victims for the dragon, accompanied by his seventy Dervishes, who were beating drums and swinging the banner. He untied the Princesses, and then waited with his wooden sword, expecting the dragon himself, as the seventy Dervishes beat their drums.
When the dragon approached, Sari Saltik addressed it with the verse of the Qur'an that begins, "Greeting on Noah in both worlds." He then cut off three of the dragon's heads, so that it fled with the remaining four. Sari Saltik followed him up to his cave, at the entrance of which he cut off the remaining heads with his wooden sword, and followed the dragon into his den. The beheaded dragon began to struggle with Sari Saltik and to press him against the rock, which gave way under his hands and feet — their marks can still be seen there. The dragon, having exhausted his strength, fell to the ground dead, and Sari Saltik, with his bloody breast and wooden sword, now led the two girls to their father the king.
But the man who had shown Saltik Sultan the road to the column had picked up the tongues and ears of the three heads cut off, and had hurried before Sari Saltik to lay them before the king, boasting that he himself had killed the dragon. Now, though the daughters asserted the contrary, yet the impostor persisted in his boast, so Sari Saltik proposed as a proof, to be boiled with the man in a cauldron. Though the pretender did not like this kind of trial, yet by order of the king he was obliged to undergo it. Sari Saltik was tied up by his Dervishes, and the impostor by his companions, and both were put into a cauldron heated by an immense fire.
Hajji Bektash was at that moment at Kirshehri in Anatolia, and was suddenly overcome. He swept with a handkerchief a dripping rock, saying, "My Saltik Muhammad is now in great anxiety, may Allah help him!" Ever since that day salt water has dripped from that rock, and from thence the salt called Hajji Bektash is produced. http://www.superluminal.com/cookbook/essay_sari_saltik.html
12) Known as "Like Meat Loves Salt" and also as "Cap o' Rushes."
http://www.story-lovers.com/barebonesvol2.html
13) Also found in History of Salt from the Salt Insitute (in third paragraph)
http://www.saltinstitute.org/
14) Also see "The Pearl Princess" and "The Salt Mountain" (Russia) (full text stories) at:
http://www.saltinstitute.org/
15) Found both silver and salt in this full-text tale: "The Battle of the Birds."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_Birds
Created 2003; last update 9/18/09.
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