Can Anyone Help with an Italian Kids Song?
April 15th, 2007

Nora wrote me:

Hi Lisa,

I stumbled across your blog and wonder if you know of yet another song, one that my grandmother – who grew up near the Via Appia – used to sing to me when I was a kid.

My closest guess as to the lyrics goes something like:

Se tase tolla
[Child’s name] que valle scuola
Se porto la segiola
Se porto canno strella
Veno vedi lo vecci tello
La maestra
E fo festa
E lo buto
De la finestra! (at this point, you *gently* toss the child over backwards and onto the floor)

My son is 3 1/2 and loves this song! He’ll ask for my mom or me to sing it to him again and again while rocking him on our laps. I haven’t been able to find the lyrics anywhere (I think they might be in Roman dialect). I was wondering if you or any of your readers know about it.

Thanks for maintaining your blog!!

Nora L. Guy

If anyone can help out with this song, with the Italian lyrics and/or an English translation, please comment below.

Thanks!

Lisa

This article was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 10:47 am and is filed under Children's Songs, Countries & Cultures, Italian, Italian Children's Songs, Italy, Languages, Questions, Readers Questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “Can Anyone Help with an Italian Kids Song?”

  1. kelsey Says:
    August 8th, 2007 at 11:57 am

    hey i baby sit a baby her mo m sings a song in ITALIAN i think its pat-a-cake can u help me iam 12 i think it gos like buttie butie lay mamn nena or something.

    Thank You For Your Time

  2. valentina Says:
    October 5th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    The complete lyrics goes “se-dia/sedio-la/ e.g the name of your child/ va-a-scuo-la/ si porta/il ca-nestre-llo/pie-no pieno di pizzu-tello/la mae-stra/ gli fa fe-sta/ e glielo butta da-lla/ finestra.

    – = a pause stretching the vowel sound of the preceding syllable
    7 = a pause while singing

    I am Roman, this is the only version I have always known and it is in Italian. You sing it by holding a child’s hand while he/she is seated on your lap facing you, wiht legs apart. While singing you let him/her move his back to and fro; while pronouncing the last lines you let him go further from you (always holding his hands, as if pretending to let him fall out of a window, like the last lines of the song say… Children enjoy a little dose of scary excitment.

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