Tooting Tubers

The late Ingmar Bergman has a wonderful scene in Fanny and Alexander where a candle is blown out by a fart and then the screen goes black. In honour of that memory, this passage from Ridie Wilson Ghezzi's introduction to the section "Nanabush Stories from the Ojibwe" in the collection edited by Brian Swann Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America

Whereas "Nanabush Eats the Artichokes" is highly entertaining, due to Nanabush's misunderstanding of the nature of the noise following close behind him, and would be even more hilarious if performed orally, it also plays the typical role of the creation myth as the item in question is an artichoke. It is difficult to tell from either the translation or the narrative in the original Ojibwe whether the narrator was referring to an actual artichoke or to some form of raw vegetable in general.

It is certainly possible for the Ojibwe to have known about artichokes. The regular artichoke, native to Italy, would have been introduced by the French long before this narrative was collected. The Ojibwe word translated as "artichoke" here is referred to in other sources as a descriptor meaning "raw." [...] Whatever vegetable was originally intended here, it is clear that the story refers to a vegetable that, when eaten, produces a great deal of flatulence!

I suspect the the vegetable in question is the Jerusalem artichoke which raw or cooked can cause flatulence. It is native to North America and likely known to the Ojibway.

And so for day 230
01.08.2007