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Piano sheet music for kids · Nursery rhyme · Level 3: Notes below middle C
See-Saw, Margery Daw
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 6/8, 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
A rocking see-saw rhyme in 6/8, two big beats to a bar. The tune swings between middle C and the G below it, so this is a piece where the thumb has to move: it plays C, then drops to the G below for “saw” and “Daw”, and climbs back. Bar 7 is the only place the hand goes up, E, G, F, D, before “fast-er” lands on B and C. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord on each big beat, C most of the way, with G7 under “mas-ter” and “fast-er”.
Practice tip: Practise bars 1 and 2 alone until the drop from C to G feels easy: thumb on C, then the same thumb reaches down to G. Say “see-SAW” and let the see-saw tip.
The words
Seesaw, Margery Daw, Jack shall have a new master, He shall have but a penny a day, Because he won't work any faster.
A short history
The rhyme was printed in Mother Goose’s Melody in London around 1765, and the Opies trace the phrase back further: Richard Brome’s play The Antipodes (1640) has sawyers singing “see saw sacke a downe”, so the words may have begun as a work song for two men on a pit saw, keeping time as the blade went up and down. “Daw” was an old word for a lazy person.
The tune everyone sings today was written by James William Elliott for his National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs (1870), the collection that also gave us the usual tunes for Humpty Dumpty and Sing a Song of Sixpence.
This arrangement follows the version printed in The Everyday Song Book (Chicago, 1927), the school songbook that was later used in court to prove that Happy Birthday was out of copyright.
Quick facts
- Tune
- James William Elliott, 1870
- Words
- Traditional (English, printed c. 1765)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 6/8
- Length
- 8 bars
- Tempo
- Rocking, dotted crotchet = 66
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 82 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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