Scotch fishermen have a traditional custom of salting their nets “for luck,” and they also sometimes throw a little salt into the sea “to blind the fairies.”
In the Isle of Man the interchange of salt is regarded as indispensable to every business transaction, while Manx beggars have even been known to refuse an alms if proffered without it.[322]
In Syracuse, Sicily, salt has won distinction as a symbol of wisdom through a curious misinterpretation of the words sedes sapientiæ of the so-called Lauretane litany; these words becoming in the mouths of the people sale e sapienza,[323] salt and wisdom.
Salt and bread, representing the necessaries of life, are the first articles taken into the dwelling of a newly married pair in Russia. And in Pomerania, at the close of a wedding breakfast, a servant carries about a plate containing salt, upon which the guests place presents of money.[324]
In olden times bread and salt were reckoned the simplest and most indispensable articles of diet, and were offered to guests as a guarantee of hospitality and friendliness. The universal reputation of salt as a symbol of good-will is shown in the proverbs and current sayings of many nations. Cicero, in his treatise on Friendship, wrote that age increased the value of friendships, even as it improved the quality of certain wines; and he added further that there was truth in the proverb, “Many pecks of salt must be eaten together to bring friendship to perfection.”
Inasmuch as salt is a necessary and wholesome article of diet, a generous use of it is reckoned beneficial. Evan Marlett Boddy, F. R. C. S., in his “History of Salt,” p. 78, comments with some asperity on the custom, prevalent at the tables of English gentlefolk, of placing salt in the tiniest receptacles, as if it were a most expensive substance. He regards it as anything but edifying “to see the host and his guests, in the most finical, grotesque manner, help themselves to the almost infinitesimal quantities of salt, as if it were a mark of good breeding and delicacy.” On the contrary, he continues, such stupid customs of “good society” are truly indicative of mental weakness and profound ignorance.
In a treatise on the “Dignity and Utility of Salt,” by Jean de Marcounille Percheron, Paris, 1584, this mineral is likened in value to the four elements recognized by the ancients,—earth, air, fire, and water; and indeed, on account of its importance for the maintenance of health in the animal economy, salt has been termed a “fifth element.” So highly did the Thracians of old prize this commodity that they bartered slaves in exchange for it, whence originated the phrase Sale emptum mancipium.
The Egyptian geographer, Cosmas, stated that a salt currency was in use in Africa in the sixth century;[325] and Marco Polo wrote that salt was a common medium of exchange among certain Asiatic peoples in the thirteenth century. In Tibet, for example, pieces of salt shaped in a mould, and weighing about half a pound each, served as small change; eighty such pieces were equal in value to a saggio of fine gold, corresponding to the Roman solidus, worth about three dollars. Salt was, moreover, used as money at this time in Yun-Nan and other provinces of southwestern China.[326]
Felix Dubois, in his “Timbuctoo the Mysterious,” p. 123, comments on the rarity of salt in the interior of the Soudan, and says that it is the most valuable commodity of that region, the true gold of the Soudanese. The bulk of the salt supply of Timbuctoo comes from the salt mines of Taudeny, which are situated in the great Sahara desert, some three hundred miles away to the north. Here the salt is found in abundance beneath a scanty layer of sand, and is dug up in lumps and fashioned into blocks. Small pieces of this rock-salt are useful to the traveler as money, and are readily accepted as such by the Soudanese merchants.