Origins and setting
“Cap o’ Rushes” is an English wonder tale most often told in East Anglia and the Fens, where reeds and rushes rim the meres and rivers. It belongs to two well-loved story families: the “As meat loves salt” testing-of-love tales and the “Disguised heroine” cycle (a cousin to “Catskin” and “Cinderella”). Its cast is spare: a wealthy father and his three daughters; the youngest, clever and wronged, who hides herself in a garment of rushes; a household where she takes service below stairs; and a young master who learns to recognise worth beneath humble wrappings. The tale turns on clear stations: a father’s foolish test, banishment, the cap of rushes, three dances, the ring in the dish, and a salt-made reconciliation.
The tale
I. The measure of love
Once there was a rich man, prosperous in lands and herds, who loved his three daughters dearly—so dearly that one evening, full of himself and his fortune, he must needs prove it.
“Tell me, my dears, how much you love me,” he said by the fire. “Let each speak true.”
The eldest, smooth as satin, said, “Father, I love you as I love life and light.”
“Well said,” he nodded.
The second, quick and pretty, said, “Father, I love you better than all the world.”
“Better yet,” he smiled.
The youngest—quiet, steady, with eyes that saw further—considered and answered simply: “Father, I love you as fresh meat loves salt.”
Silence, then a crack of temper like a stick in the flames. “What talk is that?” he cried. “Meat and salt! Pack your things. If that is your love, you shall have none of mine. Out of my house this night.”
Her sisters fluttered; the servants stared. The girl bowed her head, kissed his hand, and went. At the edge of the village, by the reed-beds where the wind sang a dry song, she cut armfuls of rushes, plaited and stitched them by moonlight into a hooded cape so full and shapeless that no one would know her. Wrapped in the cap o’ rushes, she walked till dawn and came at last to a great house by a river.
II. Cap o’ Rushes in the kitchen
She knocked at the back door. The cook peered out. “What are you, bog-trotter?”
“A girl for hire, if there’s work for sweeping and scouring,” came the muffled answer.
“Name?”
She thought of the rustle round her. “Cap o’ Rushes.”
“Then in you come, Cap o’ Rushes,” said the cook, grinning despite herself. “Mind you’re brisk.”
So Cap o’ Rushes made beds, scrubbed flags, blacked grates, plucked fowl, and kept herself small and useful. The other servants teased at first, for she never took off her rustling hood, but they soon found she had neat hands and a kind way. Only when the house was sleeping would she creep to her pallet, lift the rush-cap, and let fall hair fine as flax and a face as fair as a new day; in the morning she hid it all away again.
Now the master of the house had a son—a courteous young gentleman who liked music and good order. When a grand dancing was proclaimed for three nights running, the kitchens were in a whirl. “You below-stairs may peep from the gallery,” said the cook, “but you, Cap o’ Rushes, must keep the fires fed.”
That evening, when the spits were turned and the sauces set by, Cap o’ Rushes slipped up to the garret, cast off her rushes, and from a little bundle she had carried since she left home she drew a gown like moonlight on water. In it she was more than pretty; she was herself. She went by a back stair to the hall, and when the young master saw her he bowed as to a princess and said, “Will you dance, fair lady?”
“With all my heart,” she said, and the music carried them. She spoke little and left before the last measure, running light to the garret where the rushes swallowed her again. In the kitchen she was blowing the embers when the household tumbled back, chattering of the unknown beauty.
“Did you see her, Cap o’ Rushes?” cried the scullion.
“Nary a glimpse,” she said, and laid on another log.
On the second night she went in a gown blue as a kingfisher’s wing; on the third, in rose-colour like dawn. Each night the young master danced with none but her; each night she slipped away. On the last, as the musicians took their bow, he begged, “Where do you live, sweet one? Tell me your name.”
She laughed softly. “Not far, not near; not high, not low; not named, not nameless,” and was gone like a candle snuffed.
III. The ring in the dish
After the third night the young master pined. He walked the river path and forgot his breakfast; he forgot his dinner too, which troubled the cook far more.
“He’ll waste away unless we tempt him,” she huffed. “Cap o’ Rushes, you’ve the lightest hand for a posset—make him one.”
Cap o’ Rushes stirred milk and spice, honey and wine, till it was smooth as silk. From her finger she slipped a gold ring—a true ring, not bought but brought from before—and let it fall to the bottom of the dish.
They carried it up. The young gentleman took a spoonful, then another; at the third he struck something with a tap. He set down the spoon and lifted out the ring.
“Who made this posset?” he asked, eyes brightening.
“Cook, sir.”
“No, sir,” said the cook stoutly. “Cap o’ Rushes made it.”
“Send Cap o’ Rushes here.”
Up went the girl in her rustling hood. He looked hard. “Where got you this ring?”
“In the kitchen, sir,” she said demurely, “where the posset was made.”
His heart leapt; his mind worked. “If you be the lady I danced with, cast off your hood.”
She untied the knots; the rushes fell away; there stood the maiden of the dances, colour rising, eyes steady. He caught her hand.
“Will you be my wife?”
“With all my heart,” she said softly, “if I may choose the wedding feast.”
“Choose what you please,” he laughed, radiant.
IV. Meat and salt
They wrote to kinsfolk, they decked the house, and Cap o’ Rushes sent a special bidding to a certain rich man in a neighbouring county—her father—who had not seen her since the night of anger.
For the feast she gave one strange order: “Let every dish be made without salt.” The cook wrung her hands but obeyed.
The guests came rustling in silk and stamping in boots. They sat; the covers were lifted; and at once faces lengthened. The soup tasted of warm water; the beef was dull as leather; the capons were pale and joyless.
“Cook has lost her wits,” murmured one.
“What’s amiss with everything?” cried another.
Only the old rich man at the end of the table sat very still. Presently tears ran down his cheeks.
“Sir?” said the young master, kindly. “Is aught to your dislike?”
The old man bowed his head. “There’s nought wrong—only I remember a child I drove from my door because she said she loved me ‘as fresh meat loves salt.’ I have eaten to-day what meat is without salt, and I know now how she loved me. Would God I could tell her so.”
A hush fell. Cap o’ Rushes rose from her place, very white and very shining. She went to the old man and knelt.
“Father, salt me with your pardon, if you please. For I am she.”
He stared, then knew her in a heartbeat, for love is quick to mend its sight. He stood, weeping and laughing together, and took her in his arms.
“Child, child—can you forgive an old fool?”
“With all my heart,” she said. “As meat forgives the lack of salt, once the salt is set beside it.”
Then the young master clapped his hands, the cook ran, and the dishes came back rightly salted—such a dinner as no one forgot. There was music and dancing till the candles guttered; the old man blessed them till his voice shook.
V. What came after
Cap o’ Rushes never wore the rush-hood again, though she kept it laid by—a remembrance of hard nights turned to good days. She and her husband were good to the servants, for they knew the weight of a scullion’s bucket and the heat of a kitchen fire. And if ever the house forgot its measure, someone would laugh and say, “Best see whether there’s salt in the pot, else Cap o’ Rushes will have our ears.”
Iconic lines remembered in the telling
- “Tell me, my dears, how much you love me.”
- “Father, I love you as fresh meat loves salt.”
- “Out of my house this night.”
- “A girl for hire, if there’s work for sweeping and scouring.”
- “Will you dance, fair lady? — With all my heart.”
- “Who made this posset? — Cap o’ Rushes made it.”
- “Where got you this ring? — In the kitchen, where the posset was made.”
- “Let every dish be made without salt.”
- “I remember a child I drove from my door…”
- “Father… for I am she.”
Closing note
“Cap o’ Rushes” binds its lesson to the tongue: love’s measure is savour, not spectacle. The wrong lies in a foolish test and a hasty judgement; the righting comes through patience, craft, and a pinch of wit—culminating in a wedding feast that teaches in a single mouthful what a page of speeches could not. And once the salt is restored, so is the household.
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