Salt Wives Not Just a Game of Thrones Species – And a Reminder for Mother’s Day : If You Are Worth Your Salt
Salt Wives Not Just a Game of Thrones Species –
And a Reminder for Mother’s Day : If You Are Worth Your Salt
Now if you are like our family you are waiting for the next instalments of Game of Thrones with bated breath, or if you aren’t so good with the toothbrush, baited breath! I saw it is finally scheduled for July this year and is only 7 episodes, well that seems a bit mean. And worse to boot Ed Sheeran is set to make a ‘guest’ appearance, oh woe that they are going with celebrity guests. Now the reason why I was thinking of GOT as we addicts call it is Salt Wives. In Game of Thrones such women are the forced concubines of the Iron Born, but in the east of Scotland a ‘salt wife’ is a slightly more up market woman than a fish wife. That is because for centuries the shores of the Firth of Forth were strewn with salt pans, as our ancestors, male and female, wrested one of seas most valuable commodities out of the Forth, that is salt!
The Origin of Salary
We forget now how easy it is to get salt now and how hard it used to be. The origin of the word salary is the Latin for salt, because Roman Legionaries were supposed to be paid in salt. In fact when we say things like a peppercorn rent we forget that peppercorns, before the age of travel, were worth more than their weight in gold. It was only men like Venetian Marco Polo bringing back spices like pepper that allowed us different kinds of taste. Salt production by fire lit pans was first started by Scottish monks in the 12th century. The nearby location of cheap coal allowed the evaporation process to prosper. And each pan was carefully tended.
Royal Approval and Fearful Smuggling
The salt production was by royal warrant which last from the 12th century to the 1950s. At the end of the process the salt wives, who were a race of women with a prodigious reputation for a fierce tongue, carried the stuff in creels to Edinburgh. Perhaps the origin of salty language! It was incredibly profitable for centuries as salt was taxed. The Salt Tax was one of the reasons for the French revolution and the English had a higher tax on salt than the Scots, so there was an enormous amount of salt smuggling done. Salt duty was done away with in the 1820s. Seems so strange now, doesn’t is?
Dinna Forget
But what doesn’t seem so strange is that in talking of wives we should pause a second and remember wives and mothers. Because yes it is that time of year when we have to demonstrate that we are worth our salt to the women in our lives. On March 26th we celebrate UK Mother’s Day. Just to add a pinch of seasoning we have made a few suggestions for you for this day of warmth and cheers.
