Letra (Lyrics)
La letra completa de «Un elefante se balanceaba» con traducción al inglés.
Un elefante se balanceaba sobre la tela de una araña. Como veía que resistía, fue a llamar a otro elefante.
#Dos elefantes se balanceaban sobre la tela de una araña. Como veían que resistía, fueron a llamar a otro elefante.
#English translation
One elephant was balancing on the thread of a spider's web. And since it held his weight just fine, he went and called another elephant.
#Un elefante se balanceaba at a glance
- Country of origin
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- Sung in
- Spanish
- Words by
- Traditional
- First known
- early 20th century
- Best for ages
- 2–6
- Mood
- counting, playful
- Last updated
- 24 July 2026
How to sing it
- Hold up one finger for the first elephant and add a finger each verse.
- Sway slowly side to side on "se balanceaba" — the whole song is a balancing act.
- Let a different child call out the new number at the start of each verse.
- Keep adding elephants until somebody loses count, which is the traditional way for it to end.
Meaning and origin
The premise is absurd and the children singing it know exactly how absurd it is: an elephant is standing on a spider’s web, the web holds, and so the elephant decides the sensible next step is to invite a friend.
Structurally this is a cumulative song, one of the oldest and most useful shapes in children’s music. The verse never changes except for the number, which climbs by one each time. That repetition is doing real work. Because the melody, the rhythm and every other word stay identical, a very small child has only one thing to track — the count — and gets to hear, over and over, that four comes after three and that each new number is simply the last one plus another elephant.
It has no ending, and that is deliberate. There is no final verse where the web breaks or the elephants fall, which means the song lasts exactly as long as everyone’s patience and arithmetic hold out. Some families stop at five, some grind on into the teens, and the collapse of the count is usually funnier than any written ending would be.
Regional versions differ in the small details. In some the elephants balance on a rope or a single thread rather than a web; in others the verb shifts between se balanceaba and se columpiaba. All of them keep the picture that makes the song work: something enormously heavy resting on something almost impossibly fine, and holding.
Common questions
- What does "Un elefante se balanceaba" mean in English?
- "One elephant was balancing" — on a spider's web. Seeing that the web held his weight, he calls another elephant to join him, and each verse adds one more.
- How many verses does the elephant song have?
- As many as the singers can manage. It is a cumulative song with no fixed ending: the count rises by one each time, and families usually stop somewhere between five and ten, or whenever the counting collapses.
- What does "Un elefante se balanceaba" teach children?
- Counting upward one at a time, and the idea that each number is the previous one plus one. Because the number changes but the tune does not, children can concentrate on the count while the melody carries them.
- Which countries sing "Un elefante se balanceaba"?
- It is sung across the Spanish-speaking world — Mexico, Spain, Argentina, Colombia and beyond — with small regional differences in wording. Some versions have the elephants swinging on a rope or a thread rather than a web.
Sources
- Traditional; widely documented in Spanish and Latin American children's song collections
