Fabæ fructus musicales
Canitis tubas ventrales
Plenas flatus divinorum
Fabæ cibi angelorum
Does that look like it might be from the Carmina Burana? It’s not, though it would fit, specifically in the “In Taberna” section. It’s actually a Latin version* of that old favourite rhyme:
Beans, beans, the musical fruit
The more you eat, the more you toot
The more you toot, the better you feel
So eat your beans at every meal!
You may be thinking, “Ew. Why do you have to be such a card?” But consider that today’s word is carminative, which is a name for a substance (such as simethicone) that relieves intestinal gas – either by reducing how much is made, or by the more traditional and more musical means of release.
And why bring in the Carmina Burana? Well, it happens that carmina and carminative both come from carmen – not Carmen as in the opera by Bizet, but the Latin noun. Carmina is simply the plural – it means ‘songs’ – while carminative is an English derivative.
So… a carminative makes your guts sing songs?
Heh. No. It turns out there are two identical Latin nouns carmen. This is from the other (somehow unrelated) one, which refers to a card for combing flax or wool. It’s not that a carminative literally scrapes the knots out of your guts (ow); the theory of the humours held that winds (i.e., farts, burps) arise from gross humours (gross in more than one sense, clearly), and a carminative substance combs them out like knots. So… from knotty to naughty (like that old joke: What did one burp say to the other? “Let’s be stinkers and go out the back way”).
So it makes your guts busy, though it doesn’t make them Bizet. But even if it doesn’t bring to mind medieval monk business, you’ll know something’s gone Orff.
* Not an exact translation; it more literally means
Beans musical fruit
You play the belly trumpets
Full of divine breath
Beans food of the angels
And yes, I made the Latin version. I really wanted to make the second line play on “carmina” but that’s a neuter noun and the adjective would have been “ventralia,” which I couldn’t make rhyme.
Sesquiotica 