Talk:Water and Salt

The synopsis makes no sense. Can you rewrite it in English?

A king asked his daughters how much they loved him. The oldest said, like her eyes; the middle, like her heart; the youngest, like water and salt. Outraged, her father ordered the youngest executed, but her sisters hid her in a cave and had a dog killed.

The youngest daughter was found by a magician, who took her to his house opposite the royal castle. A prince fell in love with her. The magician ordered them to kill him the day before the wedding, to invite three kings, one of them her father, and to serve her father no water and salt. When they killed him, his blood transformed the stairs into gold, so that the kings were afraid to climb it, but the prince insisted. At the banquet, the king could not eat without water and salt, and his daughter revealed to him what she had done.

What the hell does this mean:

The magician ordered them to kill him the day before the wedding, to invite three kings, one of them her father, and to serve her father no water and salt. When they killed him, his blood transformed the stairs into gold, so that the kings were afraid to climb it, but the prince insisted. At the banquet, the king could not eat without water and salt, and his daughter revealed to him what she had done.

The magician ordered "them" to kill "him" - the prince? This is so bad that I can't even make suggestions to clean it up, because I can't figure out what it's supposed to say!


 * This makes more sense http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/salt.html#italy —Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

Cultural Variations
There are a number of cultural variations of the story, making it difficult to determine the age and geographic origins of the concept. At least listing the titles of the variations would be nice, and a tentative list is available here: https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/salt.html

A few of these works might already have Wikipedia articles, and it would be useful to at least have a "see also" section, if nothing else.

99.145.186.17 (talk) 02:19, 24 July 2019 (UTC)