A Beautifully Meandering Exploration of Women and the Sea
My dad gave me ‘Salt on Your Tongue’ by Charlotte Runcie while I was pregnant. It was a somewhat hesitant gift. Largely written during, and shortly after, her own pregnancy, Runcie includes a visceral description of the birth of her daughter. Let’s just say it’s not a serene scene by candlelight! Far from adding to the stresses of pregnancy, though, reading this book was a joy and a tonic. Pregnancy, birth and early motherhood are among the most primal stages of life, and I welcomed Runcie’s brutal honesty.
‘Salt on Your Tongue’ explores the romance of the sea, its draw and the stories of women connected with it. Runcie looks at the wistful wife on the headland, awaiting her husband’s return, but she goes much further than that. Ancient myth, literature, Celtic tales and historical accounts are woven through her own quiet journey towards motherhood with the sea as backdrop, muse and confidant.
Runcie celebrates real wildness, in women as well as in water. She strips back the modern sexualisation of ancient characters and revels in their original ferocity.
These malevolent sea-women in the ancient myths were nothing like the tempting seductresses that subsequent artists have tried to sanitise them into being. They were female, and they were mothers, and they were able to bring men to their doom through pure overpowering violence.
Women of the shoreline are honoured too. Cockle harvesters, fish and salt-wives are brought centre stage. There’s a fabulous account of the ‘gynecocracy’ of the fishing trade in the Firth of Forth in the 19th century, particularly the formidable fishwives of Newhaven.
Between the sociological and the literary, Runcie weaves a more fundamental story. One of our intrinsic connection to salt water, tides and the liminal space of the shoreline.
We ourselves are salty (there is a fascinating passage about why fatal saltwater drownings are rarer than freshwater ones, on account of the damaging salt differential between freshwater in the lungs and our own salty blood). In the womb we are marine mammals…
It turns in the waters inside me, a mermaid. This animal will breathe liquid until human voices wake it, and it will not drown.
… and after birth, we are somehow always drawn to the sound of the sea, so similar to our soundtrack in utero.
‘Salt on Your Tongue’ will infuriate some people. If you’re looking for strong narrative thread this isn’t the book for you. However if you enjoy beach-combing, as I do, then you will likely enjoy the meandering, from one little treasure to the next, with a bite in the air and the sea lapping at your feet.
