Under the title: “Rueda songs. Dances”, Tadea Fuentes Vázquez and Mª Luz Escribano Pueo, lecturer of the University of Granada, collect rueda songs of the traditional folklore of Granada and they regret the inevitably lost songs; according to these two researchers, “we are reluctant to a stupid optimism in which nothing valuable dissappears. Sometimes wonders vanish. Books preserve them embalmed, it is not much, but it is the only thing we can do, it is what we have done and we recommend you to read it, at least as archaeological material.”
A “Ronda” is a meeting in which lads sing to their lovers at the door of their house, but it is also a dance in which dancers turn making circles, free or taken by the hand. The authors of this book say that “a lot of child songs are very similar and they preserve vary old stories; in Italian songs there are remains of old pagan ceremonies and many of them preserve corrupt archaic words.”
According to Tadea Fuentes and Mª Luz Escribano, the rondeau is a sort of song of the XIII and XIV centuries often accompanied by a dance. “It was also known as rondel, very similar to the virelay, and was cultivated by troubadours. De rondón still means in Spanish impetuously, impulsively. In Fuente Vaqueros they call rondones, as García Lorca collects and we could verify talking to an inhabitant of the village, not only ring songs and games, but every child game and dance in ring or in pairs played from dusk until late at night in the squares or nearby fields.”
The popular songs published in this book are from different towns of the province of Granada. One of them says:
Adiós, morena, adiós, / me voy a retirar, / si no me das el sí, / otra me lo dará, / otra que me lo dio, / adiós morena, adiós. / Si me quieres chiquilla, / por Dios, dímelo / que me voy a morir, / de pena y dolor.
Good bye, brunette, good bye / I am going to leave / if you do not say yes / another one will say it / another one who said it / good bye brunette, good bye.
If you love me darling / say it, for the love of God / because I am going to die / of sorrow and grief.
Reference: Prof. Mª Luz Escribano Pueo.
Dpt. of Language and Literature Didactics
Phone number: 958 243963 / 243965.
E-mail: marialuz@ugr.es
