On this page I’ve collected the melodies of a handful of old nursery rhymes, specifically some of those featured in Ladybird’s square nursery rhyme books from 1987:
Each melody is shown as sheet music (svg), with a playable audio version (midi), the rhyme’s Roud number and a link to the source where I found the tune.
The exact wording and tunes of nursery rhymes varies a lot according to region, culture and time period. I’ve usually tried to use the most common tune, but where I’m not sure I just picked my favourite. In some cases I tweaked the melody a bit to match the wording in the Ladybird books.
I transcribed the scores in MuseScore 2 and produced this website using a rudimentary bash script. All the source code and scores are here. There’s also an A5 pdf version here, and a book version suitable for short-edge-flip double-sided printing here.
