Love it love it love it.

Wandering around Books etc this evening, picking up a few titles I’d been meaning to read for ages, I spotted the cover of this book, and was surprised when the title made me stop and think.

As meat loves salt.

Why does that sound so familiar?

I stood and wracked my brains for ten minutes, trying to remember where I knew that phrase from. It wasn’t the title of a book, or line from a song. It seemed as familiar as my teeth, as close to my memory as the smell of home.

All the way home, it bothered me. As meat loves salt. As meat loves salt. Where do I know that from, dammit?

When I got in, I leapt online, and found the answer - it’s a line from a story my grandmother used to tell me, tucked up in bed in the Isle of Man, watching the beam of the lighthouse sweep the sea.

The story is called Cap ‘o’ Rushes (or, according to the version my grandmother told from memory, Cap o’Rushen), and is thought to be an English/Scottish version of the Cinderella tale (though it bears some similarities to bits of King Lear. But apparently the sentiment isn’t limited to that tradition at all - one site gives variations from all over europe and beyond (note how grisly the Italian version is - but then, they generally are…)

Incidentally, this page is completely fascinating, classifying folk tales from many traditions into subject areas, and revealing hidden meanings.

Such unexpected pleasure on a damp Thursday night.

As meat loves salt….such an enigmatic sentiment. Practical. Unshakable. True.