I Love Sixpence

About this arrangement

A cheerful rhyme in a minor key, with the tune printed by Walter Crane in 1878. A minor has no sharps or flats in the key signature, and G sharp turns up in bars 2, 4 and 8 on the way home to A. The tune starts on the C above middle C and the hand moves about: down to E in bar 2, up to the high G in bar 5. Bars 4 to 6 have dotted quavers (dotted eighth notes) followed by quick semiquavers, a long-short skip, for “love my life” and “lend an-other”. The left hand plays chords in A minor, E and E7, D minor, G and C.

Practice tip: Find every G sharp before you start. Bars 4 and 8 are the same, so learn that ending once and use it twice.

The words

O dear Sixpence, I've got Sixpence, I love Sixpence as I love my life; I'll spend a penny on't, and I'll lend another on't, And I'll carry fourpence home to my wife.

A short history

A tester was an old name for a sixpence, from the teston, a Tudor coin, so this rhyme is about someone very pleased to have a sixpence and planning how to spend it: a penny spent, a penny lent, and fourpence carried home.

Walter Crane printed it in his picture book The Baby’s Bouquet in 1878 with the title The Jolly Tester, and John Graham included it in his Traditional Nursery Rhymes of 1911 as O Dear Sixpence, with the same tune.

The sixpence was a small silver coin worth half a shilling, and both Britain and Australia used it until they changed to decimal money.

Quick facts

Tune

Traditional (English; tune as printed by Walter Crane, 1878)

Key

A minor

Time signature

4/4

Length

8 bars

Tempo

Brightly, crotchet = 96

Difficulty

Level 6: Moving on (piece 190 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