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Piano sheet music for kids · Folk song · Level 3: Notes below middle C
The Water Is Wide
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 15 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 slow English love song, the one that begins “The water is wide, I cannot get o’er”. The right hand spans an octave, from the G below middle C to the G above, so the hand moves down for “o’er” and “row” and back up for “boat”. The pickup is five quavers (eighth notes) long, and the tune is full of long notes: a semibreve (whole note) tied over the bar line to the next note, which you hold rather than play again. While the right hand holds, the left hand keeps moving, a bass note and a chord on every beat pair, through C, F, A minor, G, E minor and G7.
Practice tip: Count “1 2 3 4” out loud through the tied notes, or they will come out short. Let the left hand carry the music while the right hand waits.
The words
The water is wide, I cannot get o'er, and neither have I wings to fly. give me a boat that can carry two, and both shall row, my love and I.
A short history
Cecil Sharp published “The Water Is Wide” in 1906, in Folk Songs from Somerset, putting the words together from several older songs he had found in southern England. The verses themselves are much older: some go back to a Scottish song, “Waly, Waly, Gin Love Be Bonny”, printed in Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany in 1724, and through it to songs of the 1600s.
The song is also known as “O Waly, Waly”, from those older words; “waly” is an old Scots cry of sorrow. Benjamin Britten made a well-known arrangement for voice and piano, and the tune has also been used for hymns.
The melody here is the one most often sung today, and only the first verse is given: two lovers who cannot cross the water, asking for a boat that can carry two.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English, published by Cecil Sharp, 1906)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 15 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Slowly, crotchet = 72
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 36 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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