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Piano sheet music for kids · Nursery rhyme · Level 3: Notes below middle C
Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 8 bars. 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 garden rhyme, with the tune Alfred Moffat printed in 1911. It starts high with the little finger on G and walks down in steady crotchets (quarter notes), with two quavers (eighth notes) for “con-trary” and “does your”. Then the hand has to move: “With” at the end of bar 4 drops to the G below middle C, and bars 5 and 6 climb up from there, A, B, C, for “silver bells” and “cockle-shells”. The last line returns to C position. The left hand plays chords, with single low bass notes in bars 5 and 6 so the hands do not bump.
Practice tip: Practise the drop in bar 4 on its own: hold D, then move the whole hand down so the thumb lands on the low G. Bars 5 and 6 start the same way, so learn one and you know both.
The words
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockleshells, And pretty maids all in a row.
A short history
Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary is number 19626 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The oldest known version was printed in Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book in the 1740s, and other 18th-century printings call her Mistress Mary and change the last line.
The rhyme has collected many explanations. It has been read as a hidden story about Mary, Queen of Scots, about Queen Mary I, or about the Catholic church, with the silver bells and cockle shells standing for church bells and pilgrims’ badges. None of these has any evidence behind it, and the rhyme has not been found in print before the 18th century, long after those queens had died.
The tune used here is the one Alfred Moffat harmonised for Our Old Nursery Rhymes, published by Augener in London in 1911. James William Elliott’s National Nursery Rhymes of 1870 sets the same words to a different tune.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English, printed 1740s; tune as printed by Alfred Moffat, 1911)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 8 bars
- Tempo
- Lightly, crotchet = 100
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 46 of 201)
- Type
- Nursery rhyme
- 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
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