Extra Credit Reading Notes: Water and Salt

As I was interested in reading some of the stories from the European unit, I decided to get ahead and see what stories were available. I was intrigued by the Italian section as it was meant to have a twist to some fairy tales. The story I read was Water and Salt, a story originally from Sicily. I was not sure what the original fairy tale was as I had never heard any story that resembled the plot from this story. The ending was unexpected as I was expecting the solution to be more clever than just have the king miss not having salt in his food. I thought there might be some lesson about how salt and water do not mix, but I guess the ending was meant to be simplistic as it is a fairy tale. I also wish that there was more elaboration on the magician in the story. Why did the daughter have to invite three kings? How did the magician know about the salt and water situation? Who is the prince the princess is marrying? Why did the king so easily agree to not serve salt and water to the king of the princess? I feel like there is a lot of detail that are not included that could make the story more interesting. I was also unsure of why the daughters had to kill the dog and give it to the king. This does not seem something that would be part of fairy tale, but maybe this more attuned to Italian fairy tales. Also I feel like there is an opportunity missed with the other two sisters. There definitely could have been more information about the sisters and why they acted so differently as compared to the salt and water princess. Overall, a weird but interesting story.

Bibliography: Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane (1885).

Pixabay: Salt, the thing that won over the King's love eventually

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