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Piano sheet music for kids · Folk song · Level 4: Up to the C above
The Keel Row
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 2/4, 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
A quick, bouncing song from Newcastle upon Tyne, in 2/4 with a one-quaver (eighth-note) pickup on “As”. The bounce comes from the dotted rhythm: a dotted quaver and a semiquaver, long-short, on “came thro’” and “gate, thro’”. In the second half the pattern flips to short-long on “O weel”. The right hand sits in C position for most of the tune, stretching down to B and G below middle C for “Sand-gate” and up to the C above for “may the” and A for “keel”. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord in every bar, C and G7, with F in the second half.
Practice tip: Say “long-short, long-short” as you play the dotted pairs and keep the short note really short. Practise bar 4 on its own so the thumb finds the G below middle C.
The words
As I came thro' Sandgate, thro' Sandgate, thro' Sandgate, As I came thro' Sandgate, I heard a lassie sing: O weel may the keel row, the keel row, the keel row, O weel may the keel row that my laddie's in.
A short history
“The Keel Row” is a Tyneside song about the keelmen of Newcastle upon Tyne, who rowed the keels, flat boats that carried coal down the river to the ships. Sandgate is the quayside district where they lived. It is number 3059 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
The song was first printed in the 1770s in Edinburgh, in A Collection of Favourite Scots Tunes edited by Charles Maclean, and Scottish versions name the Canongate instead of Sandgate, so it is not certain whether the tune is Scottish or English. It also appears in Northumbrian manuscripts of the same period, one of them dated 1770.
The quick march of the tune made it a favourite of the army: it is still the trot past of the Life Guards and the Royal Horse Artillery.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (Tyneside, printed 1770s)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 2/4
- Length
- 16 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Briskly, crotchet = 100
- Difficulty
- Level 4: Up to the C above (piece 136 of 201)
- Type
- Folk 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
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