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Piano sheet music for kids · Nursery rhyme · Level 3: Notes below middle C
Ding, Dong, Bell
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 11 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 rhyme about the cat in the well, with the tune found in Victorian nursery books. “Ding, dong” swings down from middle C to the G below, like a bell, so start with finger 4 on C and the thumb ready on G; for bar 2 the hand moves up into C position. Most bars mix pairs of quavers (eighth notes) with longer notes, and the tune climbs to A with the little finger in bars 6, 8 and 10. Bar 10 has something new: a triplet, three quick notes, A, G, F, played in the time of one beat on the word “in”. The left hand plays chords that change in the middle of most bars.
Practice tip: Practise bars 1 and 3 slowly so the drop to the low G and back is smooth. In bar 10 say “trip-o-let” evenly for the three quick notes on “in”.
The words
Ding dong bell! Pussy's in the well! Who put her in? Little Tommy Green. Who pulled her out? Little Tommy Stout. What a naughty boy was that To drown poor pussycat, Who ne'er did any harm, But killed all the mice in father's barn.
A short history
Ding, Dong, Bell is number 12853 in the Roud Folk Song Index, and the cat in the well is very old. The earliest known reference comes from John Lant, organist of Winchester Cathedral, in 1580. Shakespeare used “ding, dong, bell” as the sound of a funeral bell in both The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice.
The version closest to the one sung today appeared in Mother Goose’s Melody, published in London around 1765. The second half, in which the naughty boy is told off for trying to drown a cat that never did any harm, makes it one of the few nursery rhymes with a clear moral.
The tune used here is the one printed in Walter Crane’s The Baby’s Opera (1877), John Graham’s Traditional Nursery Rhymes (1911) and Alfred Moffat’s Our Old Nursery Rhymes (1911); this arrangement follows Moffat.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English, 18th century; tune as printed by Alfred Moffat, 1911)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 11 bars
- Tempo
- Like a bell, crotchet = 96
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 107 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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