Spanish song

Arroz con leche

Rice Pudding

Lyrics

Verso

,

Nicolás,

,

,

.

Verso 2

.

Verso 3 (1895)

,

,

.

Final

,

,

.

New words in this song

Comprehension drill

3 questions on what you just read. Get one wrong and the story will show you where it says otherwise.

Anonymous Spanish corro (ring-game) song, in print by 1895 in Braulio Vigón's Asturian field collection (Juegos y rimas infantiles, page 72) and documented across Spain and Latin America through the 19th century. We teach the familiar Latin American form plus the shoes-and-stockings verse (a traditional accretion sung wherever the song is sung) and close on the choosing verse exactly as the 1895 page prints it. Source text. Translation ours.

A proposal of marriage set to a pudding. Children sing it in a ring: one stands in the middle, the rest circle, and at con , con no the chooser points - yes to this one, no to that one - until the song ends on a choice. It was already old when a folklorist wrote it down in Asturias in 1895, and it is still sung from Madrid to Buenos Aires.

The grammar smuggled inside is the subjunctive. , - who can sew, who can embroider - is saber in the subjunctive (sepa), because the bride is hypothetical. You will meet this structure formally much later in the course; for now the song plants the sound of it, which is how natives learned it too.

The husband-hunting criteria are, admittedly, from 1895. Treat the sewing and embroidering as a period detail, like the military-style shirts in the version the folklorist collected, and enjoy the tune.