Arroz con Leche Lyrics
A Spanish circle-game song whose title means "rice with milk", a sweet rice pudding. A child in the ring sings that they want to marry a young girl of this place, then chooses a partner at the end. The Spanish words come with an English translation.
Arroz con Leche
Arroz con leche
Me quiero casar
Con una mocita
De este lugar.
Contigo sí, contigo no,
contigo, mi vida,
me casaré yo.
In English
Rice with milk,
I want to marry
a young girl
of this place.
With you yes, with you no,
with you, my life,
I will marry.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/arroz-con-leche/
- Type
- Action Songs
- Tune
- Sung in Spanish at a walking pace, the last three lines a little slower
- Best for ages
- 3 to 8 years
Hand Motions and Actions
| When you sing | Do this |
|---|---|
| Arroz con leche | Children join hands and walk round in a circle, with one child standing in the middle. |
| Me quiero casar con una mocita de este lugar | Keep circling; the child in the middle walks the other way inside the ring. |
| Contigo sí, contigo no | The child in the middle points to one child, then another, on each beat. |
| Contigo, mi vida, me casaré yo | The pointing stops and the middle child takes the chosen child's hands, and the chosen child goes to the middle for the next round. |
What Does Arroz con Leche Mean?
The song is in Spanish and is sung by children across Spain and Latin America. Arroz con leche means "rice with milk", the name of a sweet pudding of rice cooked in milk. In the Americas it is said roughly ah-ROSS kon LEH-cheh, and in Spain the z of arroz sounds like "th".
The words say: rice with milk, I want to marry a young girl of this place. Then comes the chant that makes it a game: contigo sí, contigo no, "with you yes, with you no", said while pointing around the circle, until it lands on contigo, mi vida, me casaré yo, "with you, my life, I will marry". The marrying is make-believe, a way of choosing a partner for the next round.
The 1921 printing marks the line "contigo, mi vida" with the word Eligiendo, which means "choosing", so that is the moment the child in the middle picks. Mocita means a young girl, and lugar means place.
History and Origin
The words and tune on this page come from Canciones Populares, a Spanish and English songbook for schools edited and arranged by Allena Luce and published in New York by Silver Burdett in 1921. Luce had been an assistant professor of music at the University of Porto Rico, the old English spelling of Puerto Rico, and many of the book's songs are from there.
This song is printed as "the same song" as a Spanish game about a widow who chooses a partner, "as they sing it in Porto Rico". That game ends with almost the same chorus, "contigo sí, contigo no". The Puerto Rican printing gives only the opening and the chorus. Many families sing more verses today, adding lines about the girl being able to sew and embroider, but those are not in this printing.
Learning Activities
- Choose a partner: sit in a circle and let each child in turn point to the next middle child at the end of the song, until everybody has had a turn.
- Cook the rice pudding: with a grown-up at the stove, make a small pot of rice cooked in milk with sugar and cinnamon, and eat it after the game.
- Learn five Spanish words: arroz (rice), leche (milk), mi vida (my life), lugar (place), yo (I).
- Slow the end: stop the circling on the last two lines and let the middle child say the partner's name before moving.