Salt is a Turkish folk tale about a padishah who neglects the affairs of state for hunting and revelry, and who puts his three sons to a test of love — only to be undone by the plainest answer of all.
ℹ️ This is an English translation of a Turkish folk tale. The Turkish original, as collected by Naki Tezel, is available here: Tuz (Türk Masalı).
SALT
Once there was, once there was not. In the old, old days, when sieves were still full of straw,1 a padishah had three sons.
The padishah was a rather dull-witted man. He behaved in ways unbecoming to his years and to his throne, and made a laughing-stock of himself before everyone. He never troubled himself with the affairs of state. He spent all his time hunting and arranging entertainments.
One day he called all three of his sons before him and asked them:
– Tell me now, how much do you love me?
The princes, well used to their father’s odd humours, found nothing strange in the question. But they also knew how angry he became when a question of his went unanswered, so the eldest prince spoke first:
– Dear father, he said, I love you as much as gold, as much as diamonds, as much as brilliants.
This answer pleased the padishah greatly. When he had finished laughing, he looked at his middle son:
– And you, how much do you love me? he asked. And the middle son said:
– Dear father, I love you as much as honey, as much as pastry, as much as kadayıf2.
The middle son’s answer pleased the padishah too. Again he laughed aloud. Then he turned to the youngest prince:
– Speak, my little son, he said, and you — how much do you love me?
The boy could not answer at once. After swallowing a little, he said:
– Dear father, I love you as much as salt.
At this unexpected answer from the youngest prince, his elder brothers could not contain themselves and burst out laughing. The padishah’s face darkened all at once. Knitting his brows, he shouted:
– What did you say? What did you say? You love me as much as salt, do you? You shameless, treacherous child. Could you find nothing in this world more precious than salt?
Then, in a fury, he took two purses of gold from a small mother-of-pearl chest beside him. One he threw to his eldest son, the other to his middle son. With his hand he signalled them to leave. As both sons all but kissed the ground and backed out of the room, the padishah clapped his hands. When a servant3 entered, he shouted:
– Fetch me the executioners, quickly!
The servant went out at once. A short while later he returned with two fearsome executioners, tall men, half-naked.
Pointing at his youngest son, the padishah shouted:
– Take this one away, quickly. Strike off his head. If you fail to carry out my order, I shall have the two of you cut to pieces.
Like everyone else in the palace, the executioners were very fond of the youngest prince. At the padishah’s command they seized him and dragged him outside. They had two horses made ready at once. One of the men took the young prince up beside him. They rode away towards the mountains.
At some distance from the palace, high on a mountainside, they halted.
The young prince was full of sorrow. At the slightest touch he would have wept. The executioners took pity on him. One of them said:
– My prince, he said, we cannot bring ourselves to harm you. But you heard our padishah’s order with your own ears. At least take off your shirt and give it to us, so that we may catch a hare and smear it with its blood. We shall carry the bloodied shirt to your father and say, “Here, we have killed the prince.” And you — go far from here, and never return to this land!
The prince was overjoyed at the executioners’ offer. He undressed at once and gave them his shirt. He thanked them both for sparing his life. Taking one of the horses from them, he rode away and was lost from sight.
He went a little, he went far, he went over hill and dale, he went six months and an autumn.4 At last he came to a country. He was so weary that he could have slid from the saddle, stretched out on the ground, and slept where he lay.
As he entered the city, he knocked at the door of the first house by the road. An old woman opened it. He did not tell her that he was a prince; he said only that he had no one in the world and was a stranger to this country, and begged her to take him in as a foster son. As it happened, the old woman had no one of her own either. Rejoicing that she had come by a grown child without any of the trouble of raising one, she took the prince in as her son.
The old woman set food before the prince. When he had eaten his fill, he went to the fountain and washed his hands, his face and his feet well. Then he fed his horse. When all this was done, he threw himself onto the bed the woman had made for him and fell into a deep sleep.
When he woke the next morning, the prince saw through the window that the people were streaming in one direction, and said to the old woman:
– Mother, he said, where is everyone going? Is it some festival?
The old woman said:
– Not a festival, my son, but something more important than one. Today they will release the bird of fortune5 and choose our padishah.
At this the prince said:
– Please, mother, take me along too. At least we shall watch.
The old woman could not refuse her foster son. She rose and dressed and they went out into the street. Together with the crowd they made their way to the great square.
When everyone had gathered, they released the bird of fortune. The bird began to circle above the crowd. Some trembled with excitement, wondering, “Will it settle on me?” Others rose on tiptoe to make themselves taller, thinking, “Let it settle on my head.”
Well — the bird wheeled round and round, and did it not come and settle on the head of our young prince?
No one would accept this. Everyone had something to say, and some shouted:
– He is a stranger, he cannot be padishah. There was nothing for it: they annulled the choice. They decided to gather again the next morning.
The next day everyone assembled in the square once more. This time, fearing that some mistake might occur and he would anger the people, the young prince went and sat down beside a stone in the graveyard at the edge of the road.
They released the bird of fortune. The people were breaking with excitement. Yet no one made a sound. All eyes followed the bird’s flight closely.
The bird of fortune wheeled round and round, and this time did it not go and settle on the head of the prince sitting at the edge of the graveyard?
Again the people raised an uproar. And some shouted:
– It does not count, it does not count — with the Turk, a thing must be done three times.6 There was nothing for it: they annulled this choice too. They decided to gather once more.
The next morning the people assembled in the square very early. The prince and the old woman had only just left their house and were walking towards the square when the bird of fortune was released.
Again the bird turned several times above the crowd. Then it darted swiftly away and settled, for the third time, on the head of the prince who was just then approaching the square. This time no one could object. And so our young prince took the government of that country into his hands as padishah. Being a clever boy, he soon made the people love him. He accomplished a great many things. He began to govern the country beautifully.
Years passed. The young padishah, without revealing who he was, sent a letter to his father inviting him to his country. His father accepted the invitation from the padishah of a neighbouring land. As he doted on travelling and merrymaking, he came at once, with a battalion of soldiers.
The young padishah had the finest dishes prepared. But he had salt put into none of them.
Because the young padishah had grown a moustache and a beard, he was delighted to sense, at their first meeting, that his father did not recognise him.
Well, they ate their evening meal. The guest padishah liked the dishes very much, but was astonished that they had no salt. Although he felt faint, he said nothing.
The next day he went among his soldiers and asked after their welfare. They too complained that the food had no salt.
That day, as they were eating the midday meal, the guest padishah asked:
– Tell me, is there no salt to be had in your country? The young padishah answered, smiling:
– There is, my padishah. And there is so much of it that salt goes out from here to the whole world.
Utterly bewildered by this answer, the padishah said:
– Very well, but all your dishes are without salt. What is the reason?
This time the young padishah said:
– They told me that you have no love at all for salt, and never allow it to be put into your food — that is why I had it left out.
The padishah broke in at once:
– Not at all, sir, he said, they told you wrongly. What sort of life would there be without salt? I love salt very much.
Then the young padishah said, smiling:
– And yet, he said, when your youngest son told you, “I love you as much as salt,” you handed him over to the executioners?
At these words the padishah came to himself. Looking closely at the young padishah before him, he recognised his son. And then two tears began to roll from his eyes.
Father and son embraced at once. Their joy was a thing to behold.
And they attained their heart’s desire.7
Translator’s Notes
- Turkish folk tales open with a fixed rhyming formula: Bir varmış, bir yokmuş; evvel zaman içinde, kalbur saman içinde — literally “there was one, there was none; in olden times, in a sieve of straw.” The second half is deliberate nonsense-rhyme rather than a description of anything; it signals to the listener that the story is leaving ordinary time. No English equivalent carries both the rhyme and the meaning, so the sense has been kept and the rhyme lost. ↩
- Kadayıf is a Turkish dessert of fine shredded pastry soaked in syrup. The word is left untranslated because the middle son’s answer is a list of sweet things, and the specific dessert matters less than the register — he answers with the pleasures of the table. ↩
- The Turkish original reads Arap uşak (“Arab servant”) here, and Arap cellat (“Arab executioner”) a few lines further on. In Ottoman-era Turkish narrative, Arap in this usage does not mean Arab but Black African — a conventional figure of palace scenes. Rendering it literally as “Arab” in English would state something the text does not mean; rendering it as “Black” would carry associations the Turkish does not. The adjective has therefore been dropped and the fact recorded here rather than silently passed over. ↩
- Another fixed formula, used whenever a character travels: Az gitmiş uz gitmiş, dere tepe düz gitmiş, altı ay bir güz gitmiş. It compresses a long journey into a few beats of rhyme, and its function is rhythmic rather than descriptive — the “six months and an autumn” is not a measurement. ↩
- The talih kuşu or “bird of fortune” (also devlet kuşu, “bird of state”) is a recurring motif in Turkic tales: a bird is released over an assembled crowd and whoever it settles upon becomes ruler. It appears in tale after tale as a way of making sovereignty a matter of fate rather than descent. ↩
- The Turkish is Türkün şartı üçtür — “the Turk’s condition is three,” a proverb meaning that a thing must be attempted three times before it counts. English “third time’s the charm” carries the sense but loses the self-naming, which is why the more literal phrasing was kept here. ↩
- The closing formula Onlar ermiş muradına — “they attained their heart’s desire” — is the standard ending of a Turkish tale, usually followed by a rhyming line that sends the listener back to ordinary life. Here the source gives only the first half. ↩
Source
Tezel, Naki. Türk Masalları. Istanbul: Alfa Yayınları, 2019.
Translated from the Turkish. The Turkish original is published in this archive as Tuz (Türk Masalı).