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Piano sheet music for kids · Nursery rhyme · Level 5: A wider range
Jack and Jill
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 6/8, 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.
About this arrangement
The tune most people sing for Jack and Jill, in 6/8 with a long-short, long-short rhythm (crotchet, quaver) all the way through. Each of the first three bars repeats one note four times and the tune climbs: G, then the C above, then D, up to E for “wa-ter” in bar 4. So the hand moves: the thumb starts on the G above middle C, the hand shifts up for “up the hill”, and in the second line it comes back to C position, where “Jill came tumb-ling af-ter” walks down G, F, E, D to finish on middle C. The left hand plays a bass note then a chord on each big beat, and the harmony changes every bar: C, A minor, G7, C, then C, F, G7, C.
Practice tip: Tap the long-short rhythm on your knee first: “JACK and JILL went”. Between bars 1 and 2 move the whole hand up so the thumb sits on C for “up the hill”; for the second line put the little finger on G, stretch it up to A for “broke his crown”, then walk down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 to land on middle C.
The words
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water; Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.
A short history
Jack and Jill was first printed around 1765 in Mother Goose’s Melody, published in London by John Newbery, where the second name was spelt Gill and the picture showed two boys. Iona and Peter Opie noted that rhyming “water” with “after” suggests the verse may be older still. The Roud Folk Song Index lists it as number 10266.
Only the first verse is old. The lines about Jack mending his head “with vinegar and brown paper” and the later adventures were added in chapbooks of the early 1800s, and the story grew to fifteen verses in some editions.
Many theories tie the rhyme to real people, from a Norse myth to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; none has any evidence behind it. The tune used here was printed with the words in James William Elliott’s National Nursery Rhymes of 1870 and again in Alfred Moffat’s Our Old Nursery Rhymes of 1911.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English, 18th century)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 6/8
- Length
- 8 bars
- Tempo
- Steadily, dotted crotchet = 58
- Difficulty
- Level 5: A wider range (piece 160 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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