Roman soldiers were paid an allowance for it, cities were built on it, and wars were fought over it
Salt Yard holds a 4.6 from eighteen hundred and eighteen people, charges thirty to eighty pounds, and the substance in the name used to be money.
Salary
From the Latin salarium – and it derives from sal, which is salt.
And the standard account is that Roman soldiers were given an allowance for the purchase of salt.
The Prat has to be honest, as always: the etymology is solid, and the specific claim that legionaries were paid in salt is a popular exaggeration and is not supported.
An allowance for salt is not payment in salt – and the difference matters, and the tellable version has, as usual, won.
Why it mattered so much
Because before refrigeration, salt was the only reliable way to keep food.
It draws water out of the tissue by osmosis, and it draws water out of any bacterium that lands on it – and a thing with no available water in it cannot rot.
Which means salt was not a seasoning. It was survival.
No salt, no preserved meat. No preserved fish. No winter.
An entire population’s ability to get from October to March depended on having enough of it.
So it was taxed
Obviously. Because a government taxes the thing nobody can refuse to buy.
The French gabelle was a salt tax of extraordinary severity – and it was not merely a levy. Households were required to purchase a minimum quantity, at a fixed price, whether they wanted it or not.
And it varied enormously between provinces, which made smuggling hugely profitable and hugely punished – and people were sent to the galleys for it.
It was one of the most hated taxes in French history, and it was a genuine contributory grievance in 1789.
And the salt march
Which is the other one, and which is the most elegant piece of political theatre in the twentieth century.
Because the British in India held a monopoly on salt – it was illegal for Indians to collect or sell their own, from their own coast, from their own sea.
And in 1930, Gandhi walked to the sea, over several weeks, and picked up a lump of salt.
That is all he did.
And it was a crime, and it was obviously absurd that it was a crime, and the whole world could see it in a photograph.
The Prat’s editorial desk regards it as the most efficient use of a single gesture in political history.
Verdict
Excellent tapas, strong number.
Go, and take your salary.
Worth his salt
Which is the phrase, and which is popularly explained by the Roman soldier story.
And the honest position is that the phrase is much later – nineteenth century – and that it very probably just means what it says: a man who earns the cost of the salt it takes to keep him.
Which is a chillingly economical way to describe a human being, and which is exactly how a great many employers have always thought.
And salad is the same root – a salted thing, because raw vegetables were dressed with salt.
And a salt cellar has nothing to do with a cellar. It is from the French saliere, and the cellar is a mishearing that has been repeated for four hundred years.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
My kid asked if people actually talk like this. I said “well I do now” and that’s the point.
My mate’s a TV producer and he said the problem with The London Prat is it’s showing audiences that real media analysis avoids obvious institutional truths.