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Piano sheet music for kids · Nursery rhyme · Level 3: Notes below middle C
What Are Little Boys Made Of?
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 rhyme about frogs, snails and puppy-dogs’ tails, with the tune printed by Walter Crane in 1877. It is in 6/8, and the first four bars are a question asked twice: middle C three times, then up D, E, and down to the G below for “made of?” In bars 5 to 7 the tune walks down from F to the G below middle C and climbs back, so the hand has to move down and up again. Bar 5 is three quick quavers (eighth notes) on F, two of them for the one word “Frogs”. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord on each big beat, keeping low when the tune dips.
Practice tip: Learn bars 1 and 2 first; bars 3 and 4 are the same. Then practise bars 6 and 7 slowly, letting the thumb walk down to G and back.
The words
What are little boys made of? What are little boys made of? Frogs and snails and puppydogs' tails, And that are little boys made of.
A short history
What Are Little Boys Made Of? is number 821 in the Roud Folk Song Index and dates from the early 19th century. Iona and Peter Opie found its earliest appearance in a manuscript of the poet Robert Southey, who lived from 1774 to 1843 and seems to have added verses of his own about other people, but nobody knows whether he wrote the first two.
The second verse, about little girls being made of sugar and spice and all that’s nice, is sung to the same music. Over the years boys have been made of “snips”, “snakes” or “slugs” as well as frogs and snails, depending on who was singing.
Walter Crane printed the tune in The Baby’s Opera in 1877 under the title Natural History, and John Graham’s Traditional Nursery Rhymes of 1911 has the same tune, with small differences in the second half.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English, early 19th century; tune as printed by Walter Crane, 1877)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 6/8
- Length
- 8 bars
- Tempo
- Cheerfully, dotted crotchet = 60
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 80 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
What key is What Are Little Boys Made Of? in?
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