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Piano sheet music for kids · Nursery rhyme · Level 4: Up to the C above
Goosey, Goosey Gander
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.
The chords in this piece
Your left hand plays three chords in this piece. The shaded keys are the notes of each chord, and the numbers under them are the left-hand fingers (1 is the thumb). Two held chords to a bar. The first bar splits C in two: low C, then E and G together. All the common piano chords, with diagrams →
C – E – G · Left hand 5 3 1
C, E and G: the home chord. Little finger on C, middle finger on E, thumb on G.
C – F – A · Left hand 5 2 1
C, F and A. The same three notes as F major, rearranged so the little finger stays on C; the thumb stretches up one key to A.
B – D – F · Left hand 5 3 2
B, D and F: G7 without its bottom G. Little finger down to B, finger 3 on D, finger 2 on F.
About this arrangement
The old wandering-goose rhyme, with the tune as Alfred Moffat printed it in 1912. The right hand sits in C position with the thumb on middle C and moves mostly in pairs of quavers (eighth notes): “Goo-sey, goo-sey” is C D C E, then two steady crotchets on G. The hand reaches up to the C above for “I”, “his” and “him” in bars 2, 6 and 7, and down to the B below middle C for “la-dy’s” in bar 4. The one new rhythm is in bar 7, where “leg, And” is a dotted quaver and a semiquaver, long-short. The left hand plays a chord on beats 1 and 3, C, F and G7; in bars 7 and 8 the first two beats each get their own chord.
Practice tip: Say “LEG and” with a quick “and” before you play bar 7, then keep the rest of the bar steady. Practise bar 4 on its own so the thumb finds the B below C without looking.
The words
Goosey, goosey, gander, Where shall I wander? Upstairs and downstairs And in my lady's chamber. There I met an old man Who would not say his prayers, So I took him by the left leg, And threw him down the stairs.
A short history
Goosey, Goosey Gander is listed as number 6488 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The earliest known printing is in Gammer Gurton’s Garland, a London collection of 1784, and at that stage it had no old man in it: after the lady’s chamber it ended with a cup of sack and a race of ginger.
The old man who would not say his prayers and was thrown down the stairs seems to have arrived in the early 1800s. Iona and Peter Opie, editors of the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, pointed out that a separate rhyme about a crane fly, “Old Father Long-Legs”, recorded from about 1780, ends the same way, and suggested the two were joined together. Theories that the rhyme is about hidden Catholic priests or Cromwell’s soldiers have no evidence behind them.
The tune used here is the one Alfred Moffat harmonised for Little Songs of Long Ago, published by Augener in London in 1912, with pictures by the Dutch illustrator Henriette Willebeek le Mair.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English, 18th century; tune as printed by Alfred Moffat, 1912)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 8 bars
- Tempo
- Cheerfully, crotchet = 100
- Difficulty
- Level 4: Up to the C above (piece 134 of 201)
- Type
- Nursery rhyme
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Chords
- C, F and G7 (diagrams above)
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
Questions and answers
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