By The Landlord
“When sodium, an unstable metal that can suddenly burst into flames, reacts with a deadly poisonous gas known as chlorine, it becomes the staple food sodium chloride, NaCl, from the only family of rocks eaten by humans … Salt is an unusual food product because it is almost universal - all human beings need salt, and most choose to eat more than is necessary.” – Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History
“The salt of any interesting civilisation is mixture.” – Antonio Tabucchi
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.” – Karen Blixen
Time for a lick of rock? Salt is one of Earth and human history’s most fundamental substances, a preservative, a food flavouring and complement, a cleaner, a cure, a disinfectant, seen in some cultures as sacred and warding off evil spirits, something with thousands of uses, naturally occurring in the body, found in our sweat, in our blood and other bodily fluids, it’s everywhere, in the sea, in the ground, and essential to our health. But like all the best things, you need just the right amount.
“Chloride is essential for digestion and in respiration. Without sodium, which the body cannot manufacture, the body would be unable to transport nutrients or oxygen, transmit nerve impulses, or move muscles, including the heart. An adult human being contains about 250 grams of salt, which would fill three or four salt-shakers, but is constantly losing it through bodily functions. It is essential to replace this lost salt,” adds Mark Kurlansky, author also of a fascinating book about the history of cod (1997), but here from his cellar-full follow-up, Salt: A World History (2002), summarising it how “salt has shaped civilisation from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions.”
So then, what shakes out? This week we seek songs about salt. As ever it’s all about getting the balance right. Salt’s in so many things, so let’s not just have oceans of songs about the sea, or about crying, both topics done before anyway, but if there’s a palpable taste of salty tears or a smell of that salty brine in the lyrical detail with justifications then let’s have good pinch of it, and perhaps also some metaphors and idioms, because they flavour our relationship with these sodium chloride crystals. Animals also seek out salt constantly …
Giraffe salt lick
Salt of the earth? Worth your salt? Take it with a pinch? Rub salt into the wound? The caustic position of passing the salt or usage salty language? Commonly used, some of these idioms have been around for centuries. Taking a pinch of salt, for example, meaning to view with scepticism, for example, may come from Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, with reference to the discovery of a dubious recipe written by the Pontic King Mithridates to make someone immune to poison. Pliny’s phrase, addito salis grano, meaning having added a grain of salt. Over the centuries grain and pinch became interchangeable. An added pinch of meaning though is that the Latin word sal (salis as the the genitive) means both "salt" and "wit", thus the Latin phrase cum grano salis could be translated to either "with a grain of salt" or "with a grain of wit” or indeed with caution.
While we can pick up about 60g of salt between thumb and index finger, some cultures have variously seen this is a no-no, in which salt could only be picked up with a knife, or distributed sparingly though a condiment tool because of its perceived preciousness and scarcity.
Depiction of pioneering Chinese drilling systems of raising brine from the bottom of a salt well (Sichuan)
First mined and produced and traded by China from crystals of dried-up lakes thousands of years ago, and later accrued and ancient Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, Indians, Egyptians, Byzantines, and Hittites, salt has been the subject of wars, trade, taxes, monopolies and all the other things us humans like to do to assert power over each other and our surroundings. It was a natural accompaniment to our eventual evolutionary pattern of settling down as farmers, growing grain, and domesticating animals. As popular science author and presenter Alice Roberts puts it: “Around 4000BC, the Mesolithic, hunter-gatherer way of life here gave way to a more settled, farming existence. Those Neolithic people built wooden trackways across the salt marshes and reed beds.”
But well as a series of Chinese emperors, the Ancient Romans’ salty systems of empire building is as embedded into language as into the ground and water. The Roman army required salt for its soldiers and for its horses and livestock. At times soldiers were even paid in salt, which was the origin of the expression “worth his salt” or “earning his salt”. The word salary comes from the Latin word for sal, for salt, and in turn the French word solde, meaning pay, which is the origin of the word, soldier.
The Romans also salted their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad.
But salt’s linguistic links spread further. Kurlansky’s book goes into this in other detail: “Even the name, Celt, is not from their own Indo-European language but from Greek. Keltoi, the name given to them by Greek historians, among them Herodotus, means ‘one who lives in hiding or under cover’. The Romans, finding them less mysterious, called them Galli or Gauls, also coming from a Greek word, used by Egyptians as well, hal, meaning salt. They were the salt people.”
Salt then has – well – salty implications rubbed in the wounds of invasion and colonialism. The Salt March, 240 miles from his ashram in Sabarmati to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea was a non-violent protest led by Mahatma Gandhi in India in 1930 a protest against the British government and Britain East India Company’s tax on salt, as well as British rule in India, leading to 60,000 arrests.
Gandhi on the Salt March, 1930
Salt’s associations then are widespread, associated with everything from sex and death, to health and wealth, ways to ward of evil spirits (throwing a pinch over your left shoulder anyone?), and ancient traditions such across France and Germany as having a pocket of salt during a marriage ceremony for good luck and virility.
Here are a few other superstitions:
“In some parts of Sweden it was ‘a dream porridge’, in others a pancake, that was made in silence and heavily salted. The custom was that the girl would eat this salty food and then go to sleep without drinking anything. As she slept, her future husband would come to her in a dream and give her water to quench her thirst. No data are available on the success rate of Swedish girls using this system to find a mate.”
“In Welsh tradition, a plate was put on the coffin with bread and salt, and a local professional sin eater arrived to eat the salt.”
“A 1670 revision of the criminal code found yet another use for salt in France. To enforce the law against suicide, it was ordered that the bodies of people who took their own lives be salted, brought before a judge, and sentenced to public display. Nor could the accused escape their day.”
Salt is part of sacred traditions from Hebrew to Russian cultures, bread and salt commonly brought together. As well as the Dead Sea Scrolls sacred to Jewish heritage, the book of Genesis tells of how Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt during Sodom's destruction when looking behind her and ignoring the warning of angels, a classic religious morality tale steeped in patriarchal misogyny, control and fear of sex of course, but also one associated with a distinctive landmark near the Dead Sea:
‘Lot’s Wife’ pillar of salt statue, Mount Sodom
Salt, used as a preservative for many foods, from fish to dairy, is also the source of many foods. Kurlansky again, now on why there are so many French cheeses: “It is the presence of salt throughout France, along with either cows, goats, or sheep, that has made it the notoriously ungovernable land of 265 kinds of cheese. French cheese makers were trying to be neither difficult nor original. They were all trying to preserve milk in salt so they could have a way of keeping it as a food supply. But with different traditions and climates, the salted curds came out 265 different ways. At one time, there were probably more variations than that.”
Salt in the modern is cheap and easy to obtain, a standard item on every table, but as Kurlansky adds: “we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilisation until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history.” It simply wasn’t understood that salt could be manufactured by mining, thanks to advances in geological and chemical study, and so by evaporating water from the ocean, brine, or mineral-rich springs, and as well as food, feedstock for the production of many chemicals.
Sir Humphry Davy demonsrtation, illustrated by the salty satirist Thomas Rowlandson
Salt has been used for many purposes beyond the dietary. Chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), among other achievements, is thought be first person, at least in the west, to separate salt into its constituent parts of sodium and chlorine. He achieved this in 1807 in Bristol, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that his work was put to widespread use, and as the bedrock for many manufacturing industries. At the time, Davy’s work in Bristol came under attack by conservative politicians, including the famous Irish MP Edmund Burke, who accused his gas experiments of promoting not only atheism but also the French Revolution. Salty times indeed.
So it’s a vast subject, spanning history and flavouring our language and sense of well-being. But how does it sprinkle into song? Let’s end as we began,with a longer look at the process of making an unusual, impressive looking, if not entirely practical Himalayan rock salt guitar by the inventive Burls Art, who has created instruments from all sorts of other materials including recycled newspapers and tin cans.
Now over to you, then, wise and knowledgeable Song Bar salts of the earth, for your musical suggestions. Shaking out the right elements for eventual results is this week’s arbiter of great taste, Nicko! Add your songs in the comments below for deadline at 11pm UK time on Monday, for playlists published next week. There’s many a grain of truth here…
Salt and pepper microphones, anyone?
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