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Piano sheet music for kids · Children's song · Level 3: Notes below middle C
Lazy Mary, Will You Get Up?
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
A singing game from the streets of New York, with the tune William Wells Newell printed in 1883; it is the same old tune as Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. It is in 6/8, two big beats to a bar. Bar 1 is four Cs and an E, then the tune leaps up to G and steps back down. Bar 4 takes the hand below middle C, B, A and G for “will you get up?”, so the thumb slides down to the G below and comes back up for bar 5. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord on each big beat, C and G7.
Practice tip: Practise bars 4 and 5 on their own: thumb down to the low G, then straight back to C. Hold “day” at the end for its full length; it is tied over into the next beat.
The words
Lazy Mary, will you get up, will you get up, will you get up? Lazy Mary, will you get up, will you get up today?
A short history
Newell collected the game in New York and printed it as number 32 in Games and Songs of American Children (1883), noting that it was familiar in the city’s streets. A mother and her daughter stand in the middle of a ring; the daughter kneels with her eyes closed and the mother sings to her. Mary asks what she will have for breakfast if she gets up, and turns down a slice of bread and a cup of tea, and then dinner, but at supper the mother offers “a nice young man with rosy cheeks”, Mary gets up, and the ring claps.
The tune is the one known as Nancy Dawson, after the dancer who made a hornpipe to it famous in London in 1759; Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is sung to it too.
Newell printed it in G major with a simple piano part. Here it is in C, with the melody note for note as he gave it.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (American singing game; printed by W. W. Newell, 1883)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 6/8
- Length
- 8 bars
- Tempo
- Brightly, dotted crotchet = 66
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 45 of 201)
- Type
- Children's 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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