   "la cucaracha" () is a traditional spanish folk corrido that became popular in mexico during the mexican revolution. ==structure== the song consists of verse-and-refrain (strophe-antistrophe) pairs, with each half of each pair consisting of four lines featuring an abcb rhyme scheme. ===refrain=== the song's earliest lyrics, from which its name is derived, concern a cockroach that has lost one of its six legs and is struggling to walk with the remaining five. the cockroach's uneven, five-legged gait is imitated by the song's original 5/4 meter, formed by removing one upbeat (corresponding to the missing sixth leg) from the second half of a 6/4 measure: :la cu-ca- | ra-cha, la cu-ca-ra-cha :| ya no pue-de ca-mi-nar :por-que no | tie-ne, por-que le fal-ta :| u-na pa-ta de a-tras.â there exist numerous versions of this line; the most common ones include "una pata par' [para] andar" ("a leg to walk [on]"), "la patita principal" ("the front leg"), "patas para caminar" ("legs for walking"), and "(los) dos patitas de atras" ("[the] two back feet"). versions mentioning specific numbers of legs are associated with a children's game and counting song in which participants pull the legs off a captured cockroach, singing the stanza once per leg and removing the leg as the number (increasing by one per stanza) is sung. other versions discard any mention of the cockroach's missing leg(s) at all, substituting unrelated material (e.g., the "marihuana pa' fumar" of the well-known anti-huerta version). ::("the cockroach, the cockroach / can no longer walk / because he doesn't have, because he lacks / a hind leg"; these lyrics form the basis for the refrain of most later versions. syllables having primary stress are in boldface; syllables having secondary stress are in roman type; unstressed syllables are in italics. measure divisions are independent of text line breaks and are indicated by vertical barlines; note that the refrain begins with an anacrusis/"pickup.") many later versions of the song, especially those whose lyrics do not mention the cockroach's missing leg(s), extend the last syllable of each line to fit the more familiar 6/4 meter. ===verses=== the song's verses fit a traditional melody separate from that of the refrain but shari
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