Ó ciranda, ó cirandinha

Oh ciranda, oh little ciranda, let us all dance the ciranda. Let us turn halfway round, a half-turn let us make. Let us turn all the way round: cavalier, change your partner.

Children hold hands in a ring and walk around while singing. At the words about the half and the full turn they reverse direction or turn on the spot, and on the last line the players swap places or partners.

A ciranda is a ring dance. The folklorist Sílvio Romero printed these lines in 1883 from Pernambuco, in the north-east of Brazil, and a Portuguese book of 1905 gives a similar opening with other continuations. A writer in 1928 said that Brazil inherited the ciranda from Portugal. How old the rhyme is beyond that, we could not establish. The verse about a glass ring that is often sung today appears in Romero as a separate love rhyme, so the modern song seems to have been put together later from several pieces. We show only the opening lines, with the old spelling "Cavalleiro".