Giro giro tondo

Round and round in a ring. The bread is as round as a round loaf. Here is a bunch of violets, to give to whoever wants them. Sandrina wants them, so let the smallest girl fall to the ground.

Children join hands in a circle and walk round while chanting. On the last line they all crouch down or tumble gently to the floor, and the game starts again.

Giro giro tondo goes with the girotondo, the circle game in which children hold hands, walk round in a ring and crouch or fall down at the last word. Versions differ from town to town, and children also invent their own lines. Ring games are known in many European countries, and Italian folklorists of the 1800s already wrote down local ring rhymes from Tuscany to Naples, Venice and Sicily. The words shown here are the Tuscan ones printed in 1883. Many Italian children today know a different, modern ending about the world falling down, but we found it in no old book, so we do not show it. You may read online that the rhyme describes the plague; no source shows this, and we do not tell it.