Mary Had a Little Lamb

Background

The words were first published in Boston in 1830 under the name of Sarah Josepha Hale, a writer and editor who later spent years campaigning for Thanksgiving to become a national holiday in the United States. The poem has an authorship puzzle attached: a Massachusetts woman, Mary Sawyer, said in later life that a lamb really had followed her to school, and her family claimed that a young man called John Roulstone wrote the first verses about it. The question has never been settled, so the poem is usually credited to Hale with that caveat.

The rhyme has a famous place in the history of sound. In 1877 Thomas Edison tested his new tinfoil phonograph by reciting "Mary had a little lamb" into it, and these are often described as the first words ever recorded and played back.

The simple tune now sung everywhere uses just four notes, which is why it turns up in so many first lessons on recorder, keyboard and xylophone.

How to practise it

This arrangement is eight bars for the right hand alone. Put your thumb on middle C and keep the hand in C position: C is 1, D is 2, E is 3 and G is 5. Finger 4 rests over F but is never used.

Learn the piece in two halves. Bars 1 to 4 end on a held G; bars 5 to 8 start the same way but finish on middle C. Because the first bar of each half is identical, many learners end up playing the first half twice by accident. Before you start bar 5, say "second time, going home" to yourself.

The one jump comes in bar 4: E, then G, G. Your finger 3 is on E and finger 5 is already waiting over G, so the hand does not move. Look at the gap between the fingers rather than at the keys, and let finger 5 drop straight down.

The trickiest moment is near the end:

Here fingers 2 and 3 swap quickly. Play bar 7 slowly five times on its own, then add the final C and count all four beats aloud: "1, 2, 3, 4". Lift only on the next "1".

A tempo ladder that works well: start at 60 beats a minute with a metronome, move to 72 once you have three clean runs, then 80, then the full 88. Keep every quarter note the same length; the repeated notes in bars 2, 3 and 6 tend to rush because they feel easy.

Musically, the tune is a little story told in two sentences. Make the first half end with a question (a light G) and the second half end with an answer (a full, warm C).

The Reading landmark notes unit uses this tune to practise finding notes around middle C.