Home › Tools › Piano Sheet Music for Kids › Did You Ever See a Lassie?
Piano sheet music for kids · Children's song · Level 3: Notes below middle C
Did You Ever See a Lassie?
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 3/4, 16 bars and a pickup. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
The copy-me game in a swinging 3/4, to the old Viennese tune Ach, du lieber Augustin. It starts on a pickup, “Did you”, on C and E. “Ev-er see a” is a dotted crotchet and three quavers (eighth notes), G, A, G, F, so the little finger stretches once to A. Then the tune steps down E, C, C and D, G, G, and the thumb has to reach down to the G below middle C for each “las-sie” and “this way”, then come back. Bar 8 has a crotchet rest. The left hand plays a waltz bass, one bass note and two chords, C and G7.
Practice tip: Feel one strong beat in each bar, like a waltz. Practise the thumb’s jump from D to the low G and back until you can do it without looking.
The words
Did you ever see a lassie, a lassie, a lassie? Did you ever see a lassie do this way and that? Do this way and that way, and this way and that way; Did you ever see a lassie do this way and that?
A short history
Did You Ever See a Lassie? is number 5040 in the Roud Folk Song Index. In the game, one child in the middle of a ring does an action, and everyone copies it as they sing “go this way and that”. Despite the Scottish word “lassie”, the song was first collected in the United States in the 1890s and first printed in 1909, in Jessie Hubbell Bancroft’s Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium.
The tune is Ach, du lieber Augustin, a Viennese song usually dated to the late seventeenth century, about a bagpiper who survived a night among the plague dead. It was known in Victorian England as “Buy a Broom”, and Walter Crane printed it with those words in The Baby’s Bouquet (1878). The melody here follows The Everyday Song Book (Chicago, 1927).
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (tune: Ach, du lieber Augustin, Vienna, 17th century)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 3/4
- Length
- 16 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Swinging, crotchet = 126
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 64 of 201)
- Type
- Children's song
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
Questions and answers
What key is Did You Ever See a Lassie? in?
How long is it?
Is Did You Ever See a Lassie? out of copyright?
What is the hardest part?
Can I print it?
← More children's songs · All 201 pieces: piano sheet music for kids
🔒 Runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded and no account is needed. Once loaded, the page and the piano keep working offline.