Easy piano song, sheet music with note names
Mary Had a Little Lamb piano notes: letters and easy sheet music
Mary Had a Little Lamb piano notes: the whole tune with letter names and octaves, in C major, 4/4, C4 to G4. Play it and print it (A4 and Letter PDF).
Two kinds of page: the tune with a letter name under every note, and a worksheet with the names left blank.
Download the PDF kit
Free to print and share. No sign-up, no e-mail, no watermark. A4 for most of the world, Letter for the US and Canada; both are black and white, with the fonts embedded.
Quick answer
Mary Had a Little Lamb on this page is the whole tune (one verse): 26 notes in 8 bars of 4/4, in C major, with a range of C4 to G4 (7 semitones). It begins on E4 and ends on C4. Below: the letter names with octave numbers, the notes on the staff, a version you can play, a note-name worksheet and the checks that were run.
Mary Had a Little Lamb at a glance
- Key
- C major (no sharps or flats)
- Time signature
- 4/4: four beats to the bar, each a quarter note
- Range
- C4 to G4, 7 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 26 notes, 8 bars
- First note
- E4 (scale degree 3)
- Last note
- C4 (scale degree 1)
- Words
- the poem by Sarah Josepha Hale, first published on 24 May 1830 by Marsh, Capen & Lyon of Boston (Wikipedia)
- Tune
- Wikipedia says the rhyme is today commonly sung to the same tune as “Merrily We Roll Along”, the chorus of “Goodnight, Ladies”; Lowell Mason’s own setting of the 1830s is not the one sung today
- Part on this page
- the whole tune, moved to C major (see the key note below)
- Tempo on this page
- quarter note = 100; a gentle practice speed chosen for this page; the two scores used here play at 220 and 180, which is faster than most people sing it
- Hands
- Right hand: the melody shown on the staff. The left hand is not shown on this page; play the tune with the right hand alone, or add any simple bass notes.
- Level
- Easy. How the level is worked out
Press a note on the staff to hear it. The sound is made in your browser from the notes of this page (a plain synthesiser, not a recording). Normal speed is quarter note = 100: a gentle practice speed chosen for this page; the two scores used here play at 220 and 180, which is faster than most people sing it.
Mary Had a Little Lamb
C major · 4/4 · melody with note names
Key C major (no sharps or flats) Range C4 to G4 Words Sarah Josepha Hale (first published 1830) Music the tune now sung to the rhyme, also the tune of “Merrily We Roll Along”
Scale of C major C D E F G A B Middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard
Melody: Wikipedia in Italian, "Mary had a little lamb" (score 1 in the article, moved down a fifth to C major) (CC BY-SA 4.0; revision 150827858 of 2026-05-24), checked note by note against 1 other source. Free to print and share under the same licence, CC BY-SA 4.0. musictheoryprint.com/charts/mary-had-a-little-lamb-piano-notes
Mary Had a Little Lamb: name the notes
C major · 4/4 · worksheet
Name Date Class
Write the letter name of every note on the line under it. The key signature tells you which notes are sharp: . The home note of the key is C.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a C, the home note of the key.
Melody: Wikipedia in Italian, "Mary had a little lamb" (score 1 in the article, moved down a fifth to C major) (CC BY-SA 4.0). Free to print and share under the same licence, CC BY-SA 4.0. musictheoryprint.com/charts/mary-had-a-little-lamb-piano-notes
The notes of Mary Had a Little Lamb, bar by bar
26 notes in 8 bars, in C major. Each note is a letter and an octave number: C4 is middle C, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard, and the numbers go up by one at every C. The ♯ and ♭ mean the black key above or below the letter. “held” means a tied note that is not played again; “rest” is silence.
| Bar | Right hand (melody) | do re mi |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | E4 D4 C4 D4 | mi re do re |
| 2 | E4 E4 E4 | mi mi mi |
| 3 | D4 D4 D4 | re re re |
| 4 | E4 G4 G4 | mi sol sol |
| 5 | E4 D4 C4 D4 | mi re do re |
| 6 | E4 E4 E4 E4 | mi mi mi mi |
| 7 | D4 D4 E4 D4 | re re mi re |
| 8 | C4 | do |
do re mi uses movable do: do is C.
Which keys to press
The whole tune stays inside 5 letter names, C4 to G4, which is what one hand covers in a five-finger position (five neighbouring white keys), so the hand does not have to move. Try the notes on the virtual piano or press a note on the staff above to hear it.
What the tune is made of
How the melody moves
Each of the 25 moves from one note to the next, counted.
Which note lengths it uses
Every note counted by its length, as a fraction of a whole note.
Most-used note: E4 (11 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 4. Different pitches: 4. Biggest leap: 3 semitones.
How the notes were checked
Not one note on this page was typed in or remembered. The melody is read by a program from Wikipedia in Italian, "Mary had a little lamb" (score 1 in the article, moved down a fifth to C major) (CC BY-SA 4.0; revision 150827858 of 2026-05-24). A second program then looked for the same notes, in the same order, in each of the sources below, which were typeset or encoded by other people. The number is the share of this page’s notes that are found there, whatever key the other source is in.
| Source | Licence | Notes there | Same pitches | Same pitches and lengths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia in Japanese, "メリーさんのひつじ" (score 1 in the article)revision 106418631 of 2025-09-10 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 25 | 96% | 65% |
| Where it differs in pitch: bar 6 beat 4: this page has E, the other source has no matching note. | ||||
The second column is lower than the first because editions write the same long notes in different ways (a half note and a tied pair, a held last note) and because performance MIDI files shorten or lengthen notes. Pitch is the part that matters for the letter names. A MIDI file of a whole piano piece does not say which notes are the melody, so the program takes the highest note at each moment; a melody note that sits under a higher accompaniment note can be missed, and that is the usual reason for a “no matching note” above.
Mary Had a Little Lamb: questions people ask
What are the letter notes of Mary Had a Little Lamb?
The first notes, with their octave numbers, are E4 D4 C4 D4 E4 E4 E4 D4 D4 D4 E4 G4. Every note of the whole tune is in the table above, one bar per row (middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard; the next C up is C5).
What key and time signature is Mary Had a Little Lamb in?
On this page it is in C major (no sharps or flats), in 4/4: four beats to the bar, each a quarter note. The score in the Italian Wikipedia article is in G major and begins B A G A; this page moves the whole tune down a fifth to C major, so it begins E D C D and every note is a white key. The Japanese Wikipedia score used in the check is in C major.
Which hand plays what, and how high and low does it go?
The range is C4 to G4, 7 semitones; 0.07% of the first vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus have a smaller range and 99.7% a larger one. The whole tune stays inside 5 letter names, C4 to G4, which is what one hand covers in a five-finger position (five neighbouring white keys), so the hand does not have to move.
Is this the whole of Mary Had a Little Lamb?
Yes, for the tune: the 8 bars are the whole melody of one verse, and the next verse uses the same tune again. The words are not printed on this page.
Is Mary Had a Little Lamb free to print and share?
Sarah Josepha Hale’s poem was first published in 1830 according to Wikipedia, and the tune is a traditional one, so both are far out of copyright. The notes are read from the score printed in the Italian Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0), which is in G major; this page moves them down a fifth, by program, to C major. The sheets are made by this site and may be printed and shared; keep the credit line, because the score they come from is shared under that licence. Modern arrangements and recordings have their own rights.
How do I know the notes are right?
The melody is read by a program from Wikipedia in Italian, "Mary had a little lamb" (score 1 in the article, moved down a fifth to C major), never typed in. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with 1 other source: the Japanese Wikipedia score (96% of its notes). It differs in places. Where they differ, the page lists every note and bar, so you can see the difference.
Who wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb?
The words are by Sarah Josepha Hale. Wikipedia says the rhyme was first published as her poem by the Boston firm Marsh, Capen & Lyon on 24 May 1830. In 1876 Mary Tyler claimed to be the “Mary” of the poem, but Wikipedia notes that the account is not supported by evidence beyond her memory.
Is it the same tune as Merrily We Roll Along?
Yes. Wikipedia says the rhyme is commonly sung today to the same tune as “Merrily We Roll Along”, the chorus of “Goodnight, Ladies”. Lowell Mason set the rhyme to a different melody in the 1830s, and that one is not the version commonly sung today.
How many different notes does Mary Had a Little Lamb use?
Four: C4, D4, E4 and G4, all white keys. The tune begins E D C D, and only the leap from E to G in bar 4 skips a note of the scale.
Why does the Japanese score not match every note?
In bar 6 this page, which follows the Italian score, has four E notes in a row, and the Japanese score has three E notes and then a rest. The other 25 of this page’s 26 notes agree, and the check table on this page lists the difference.
musictheoryprint.com · free to print and share
Mary Had a Little Lamb in real music: the numbers
In C major the tune uses 4 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, all of them inside the key. It moves by step 14 times out of 25, and ends on the home note, as 75% of major-key art songs do.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | E4 (degree 3) | 32.5% start on degree 3 |
| Last note | C4 (degree 1) | 75.1% end on degree 1 |
| Range of the tune | 7 semitones (C4 to G4) | 0% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 100% more |
The art-song numbers are for the first vocal line of every major-key song whose key signature does not change; the numbers for this tune are counted on the melody printed above.
How common C major is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in C major | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 6.5% | 5 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 18.6% | 1 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 10.6% | 2 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 8.7% | 3 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 11.6% | 1 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 8.2% | 1 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for C major.
Where the tune sits among singers' ranges
| Voice type (as labelled in the scores) | Typical range of a real song line | This tune (C4 to G4) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | fits if moved up 3 semitones |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | fits as written |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | fits if moved down 1 semitone |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | fits if moved down 3 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | fits if moved down 7 semitones |
Typical range = the median across song lines of the lowest and highest notes (ignoring one stray note each side), from 285 vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus. "Fits" means both ends of the tune are inside it.
Method
- This tune's own numbers are counted by a script on the decoded melody (tied notes counted once, rests ignored).
- Art-song numbers are read from the files behind the site's statistics pages (OpenScore Lieder Corpus: key and scale-degree counts for the first vocal line of every piece, vocal ranges of 1,458 lines).
- Key counts for Mutopia and MusicBrainz come from the same published statistics; a key is counted from its key signature.
Data: computed from the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), 1,462 scores. Snapshot: commit 6b2dc542ce (2026-04-07).
Background
Excerpts from open reference works, reproduced as published (references, images and tables removed). Every excerpt names its source, licence and original article.
About “Mary Had a Little Lamb”
Overview
"Mary Had a Little Lamb" is an English-language nursery rhyme of nineteenth-century American origin, first published by American writer Sarah Josepha Hale in 1830. Its Roud Folk Song Index number is 7622.
Text
The text as originally published consisted of three stanzas, each of eight lines, although the ABAB rhyme scheme (ABCB in the first four lines) allows each stanza to be divided into two four-line parts.
Source: Wikipedia, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-05-24.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Wikipedia in Italian, "Mary had a little lamb" (score 1 in the article, moved down a fifth to C major), Wikipedia in Japanese, "メリーさんのひつじ" (score 1 in the article), Wikipedia: Mary Had a Little Lamb.