Reading Notes, Itallian Popular Tales : Water and Salt

Korean sea salt

(Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Water and Salt

There once a king and he had three daughters. One day, they were all having dinner together and he asked the girls, "Which of you loves me the most?". The oldest daughter said, "I love you as much as I love my eyes". The second daughter said, "I love you even more, father. You can still your life without your eyes. I love you just as I much as I love my own heart." The youngest daughter said, "I love you as much as water and salt."

The king spit out his water. "Salt? You love me as much as you love salt? That is how much you value my presence in your life? Someone call the executioners, as you are to be killed immediately." The executioners carried the girl off to kill her, but her sisters caught up with them and gave them a dog dressed in their youngest sister's clothes and a necklace that looked like the one that she always wore. The executed the dog and gave the tongue of the dog and the necklace to the king as proof that they killed their daughter when she really escaped to live in a forest far away.

One day ten years later, when the girl was foraging in the trees for food, a prince who was hunting in the forest saw her and fell in love at first sight. He took her back to his palace to live with him and he asked her to marry him. She said yes on the conditions that they would have a very regal wedding in which they would invite all of the kings from the kingdoms around them.

The two had a wedding and the young girl's father came to the event of the year, not recognizing his own daughter as the bride. At the dinner of the wedding, the servants were advised to not give the girl's father salt in his food or water to drink. While the couple was going by and talking to their guests at dinner, they stopped by the girl's father who looked angry and pale. They asked him if he was okay. He said that he had traveled all day and he was finally ready to eat and they gave him terribly bland food and did not give him water. The girl pulled the necklace out from the neck of her dress and said, "See? This is what I meant when I said I loved you as much as water and salt. We can not live life without either of those things."

Part of the Italian Popular Tales unit. Story source: Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane (1885).