Where does the children's song Sarasponda come from?

Answer 1

where sarasponda comes fromSarasponda is a dutch folk song that Mothers used to sing while their daughters spun their first thread, and made their first cloth with it by themselves. The song is supposed to immitate the sound of the spinning wheel as the girl spun her thread. It was to ensure that the girl would become skilled in weaving and spinning, and then marry a good husband.

I'll accept the Dutch theory. Sounds good. However I learned the song in a mostly English-speaking part of Texas. One theory is that the song is a garbled form of a Spanish folk song, created by English-speaking children trying to sing words they heard but didn't understand at all. E.g., The last line (Ah say, Pah say, O !) being a hearing of "take a walk" -- hace paseo, or some such. (Sorry, don't know Spanish). Two additional points: My eastern parents had never heard the song, tho my mom was from NY and her speech contained Dutchisms. ALso, we too thought it was a spinning song, and the custom was that a few people sang the "words" while everyone else murmured "Boom-da" over & over in the way we imagined a spinning wheel might sound.

[I want to add this, rather than editing or deleting the above, because it is also personal experience rather than factual research. I would be very surprised if there was any Dutch origin to this song as there is not a single Dutch word in it, and none of the words even have a particularly Dutch "sound" or "feel" to them. However it is a nonsense song, so who can say for certain? Sometimes the more these theories get repeated the more they take on an authoritative air, although they have not necessarily been verified. I see the Dutch origins of the song are now cited in Wikipedia which means that even more people will take it as being true.]