After searching far and wide, a poor, old widow succeeds in marrying her son to a thrifty bride and lives together with the young couple, who become wealthy. By and by, the mother feels neglected and is jealous of her young daughter-in-law. She accuses her son of loving her only ‘like salt’ but his young wife ‘like sugar’ and announces that she is thinking about getting married herself, in spite of her advanced age. The son is troubled, but he orders his wife to cook all dishes only with sugar instead of salt for a while.

When the mother complains to her son about the dishes being too sweet, the latter secretly asks his wife to use only salt in the food for a week. Again, the mother complains. She is not interested in the appropriateness of the various relations within the family that her son has tried to convey to her through the salty and sweet dishes. She insists on getting married and being independent.

Now her son gives her a stick of leek to chew from top to bottom overnight and to prove she has the strength and tenacity that are necessary for a marriage. The old woman is unable to do so: her gums bleeds from chewing the stringy leek and resigns herself to not marrying. The family celebrates their reconciliation with a shared feast. However, the old mother dies from exhaustion during the night.

The parable ‘Love like Salt’ (cf. AT 923, usually detailing a conflict between father and daughter), is presented by the narrator Mahidjul Maksut in her own version, ‘Lond taj šekeri’ [Salt and sugar], as an almost humorous fairy tale about marriage and jealousy; the basic theme of the ‘problems with mothers-in-law’ is seen from both sides. The mother considers ‘love like sugar’, as she calls the relation between the young couple, to be on a higher plane than the love of the son for his mother, the ‘love like salt’. Her desire to be loved like a wife derives from the wish to get married herself, despite her old age.

For the son, this is presumptuous. His attempt to make his mother understand the value of a son’s love by giving her a practical example, fails. With regard to her position in the house, she does not accept the parable that salt and sugar are equally necessary and that each is appreciated where it is appropriate or belongs. But she cannot offer proof that she is still fit for marriage. Even chewing hard food is too much for her and eventually causes her death.

The storyteller describes the old mother’s search for a bride in considerable detail and in four repeated steps. So, the focus of the tale is not only on the jealousy of the mother and on her fatal stubbornness but also on the courtship, which indirectly reveals her character. She is looking for the thriftiest possible daughter-in-law and puts the candidates to the test during her visits: when the prospective bride has some pastry crumbs left after kneading the dough and washing her hands, the mother concludes waste and squandering resources. Although some girls give the poverty-stricken woman bread and crumbs generously and thus prove their kind-heartedness, it is thriftiness that counts for the mother as the highest virtue. Her cunning at least makes her succeed in the end: thanks to her daughter-in-law, the family becomes rich.

Literature

Fennesz-Juhasz, Christiane; Cech, Petra; Halwachs, Dieter; Heinschink, Mozes F. (ed.). 2003. Die schlaue Romni: Märchen und Lieder der Roma / E bengali Romni: So Roma phenen taj gilaben. Klagenfurt: Drava Verlag (Transkript und deutsche Übersetzung / transkripto taj njamcicka translacija / transcript and German translation: 75–87).