While a poor man's wife in the village thrives, the Sultana in the palace grows thinner and scrappier by the minute.

The Sultan summons the poor man and demands to know the secret of his wife's happiness.

'Very simple,' he replies. 'I feed her meat of the tongue.'

The Sultan sends out for all the tongues money can buy - ox tongues and lambs' tongues and larks' tongues; still his sad Sultana withers away. He orders his litter, makes her change places with the poor man's wife; she immediately starts to thrive, becoming the picture of health, plumper, rosier, gayer. 

Meanwhile, in the palace, her replacement languishes, and soon has become as scrawny and miserable as the former queen. For the tongue meats that the poor man feeds the women are not material, of course. They are fairy tales, stories, jokes, songs.  The poor man nourishes himself and his wife (or whomever he is with) on talk.  He wraps them in language; he banishes melancholy by refusing silence. 

Storytelling makes women thrive - and not exclusively women, the Kenyan fable implies, but other sorts of people, too, even sultans. 

* * *

The poor man, after coming home at night, would greet his new (royal) wife, tell her about the things he had seen, especially the funny things, and then tell her stories which made her shriek with laughter. Next he would take his banjo and sing her songs, of which he knew a great many.  Until late at night he would play with her and amuse her.  And lo!  The queen grew fat in a few weeks, beautiful to look at, and her skin was shin ing and taut, like a young girl’s skin.  And she was smiling all day, remembering the many funny things her new husband had told her.  When the sultan called her back she refused to come. So the sultan came to fetch her, and found her all changed and happy. He asked her what the poor man had done to her, and she told him.  Then he understood the meaning of meat of the tongue.

* * *
Such a story is told of a Sultan whose wife was unable to gain weight despite the food she ate.  One day the Sultan observed that the wife of one of his servants was plump and full of life and vigor. When the Sultan asked him what he fed his wife, the servant said, "I feed her meat of the tongue." 

So, the Sultan ordered his chefs to prepare tongue from animals and birds; however it did not have the desired effect.

In desperation, he requested the wives exchange places.  Quickly, his wife began to thrive and the servant’s wife began to wither and fade. The Sultan then approached his wife and said, "What does he feed you?"  "My husband," she answered, "the meat of the tongue that your servant fed me wasn’t the tongue of an animal, but the stories, poetry, and songs that roll off the tongue and fill the heart full. This is what makes me thrive."