Water and Salt

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Water and Salt is an Italian fairy tale collected by Thomas Frederick Crane in his Italian Popular Tales.

It is Aarne-Thompson type 923, love like salt.

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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.