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Piano sheet music for kids · Folk song · Level 6: Moving on
Scarborough Fair
Free beginner piano sheet music: A minor, 3/4, 16 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
An old English ballad in a mode rather than a key: it is A Dorian, which means A minor with an F sharp instead of F. We have written it with an A minor key signature (no sharps or flats), and the one F sharp in the tune, in bar 7 on the “-y” of “rose-ma-ry”, is marked. The right hand starts with the thumb on the A below middle C and spans a ninth, from the G below middle C up to the A above it, so the hand moves, and there are dotted rhythms (“Scar-bo-rough”). The left hand plays a waltz bass on A minor, G, C and one D major chord, with shapes A–C–E, G–B–D, C–E–G and D–F sharp–A.
Practice tip: Play the left hand alone first to learn the chord shapes, then the tune alone, listening for the hollow, old sound of the F sharp in bar 7.
The words
Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Remember me to one who lives there, for once she was a true love of mine.
A short history
“Scarborough Fair” is an English ballad descended from “The Elfin Knight”, a riddling song known in Scotland by the 1670s, in which a suitor is set impossible tasks: a shirt with no seam, washed in a dry well. By the 18th century the setting had moved to Scarborough, the Yorkshire port whose medieval fair ran for 45 days each summer.
The tune we use is the one Ewan MacColl collected in 1947 from the singing of Mark Anderson in Teesdale, County Durham, and printed with Peggy Seeger in The Singing Island (1960). Its old Dorian scale, with the raised sixth, is part of why it sounds so ancient.
The song was little known outside folk circles until Martin Carthy learnt it from that book and sang it in the early 1960s; Paul Simon learnt it from him, and the 1966 Simon and Garfunkel recording, used in The Graduate, made it one of the most famous folk songs in the world.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English; tune collected 1947)
- Key
- A minor
- Time signature
- 3/4
- Length
- 16 bars
- Tempo
- Flowing, crotchet = 120
- Difficulty
- Level 6: Moving on (piece 175 of 201)
- Type
- Folk 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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