Folk Songs on 6 Hole Ocarina Tabs

Comin' Thro' the Rye

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About Comin’ Thro’ the Rye
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The words most people know were shaped by Robert Burns, who in 1782 reworked an older Scottish country song for a collection of traditional airs. That was his habit: he gathered rough folk fragments and polished them into singable verse. The tune itself is older and anonymous, a lowland air that had been passed around long before Burns set his lines to it.

Do As I'm Doing

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About Do As I’m Doing
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This is an imitation game more than a concert piece. One person sings and acts out a motion, everyone copies, and the “fast or slow, high or low” verse invites the leader to change it up. Songs like this pass hand to hand among children and teachers, so no single author or date can be pinned to it honestly.

Edelweiss

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About Edelweiss
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Despite how traditional it sounds, this is not an Austrian folk song. Richard Rodgers wrote the music and Oscar Hammerstein II the words for the 1959 musical The Sound of Music, and it was the last lyric Hammerstein finished before his death. In the show a character sings it as a quiet farewell to his homeland, which is why it carries the flavor of an old alpine air.

For He is a Jolly Good Fellow

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About For He is a Jolly Good Fellow
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The tune is not English by birth. It comes from the French air “Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre,” a mock lament about the Duke of Marlborough that circulated in the 1700s and spread across Europe. English speakers kept the melody, dropped the story, and turned it into the song you sing when someone has done something worth toasting.

Kumbayah

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About Kumbayah
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Kumbayah is an African American spiritual, most often traced to the Gullah communities of the South Carolina and Georgia coast in the early twentieth century. The title is thought to be a dialect rendering of “come by here,” a plea for help. It traveled north with song collectors and later became a campfire and civil-rights-era standard, which is how most people first meet it.

Lullaby of Takeda

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About Lullaby of Takeda
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This is a Japanese cradle song, “Takeda no Komoriuta,” from the Takeda district of Kyoto. It is sung in the voice of a young girl sent away to mind another family’s baby, and its sorrow is not decorative: the song is tied to the history of Japan’s burakumin outcast communities. That weight is why it sounds mournful even before you know the words.

Ring Around the Rosy

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About Ring Around the Rosy
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This English singing game has been sung in playgrounds for well over a century, and the action of a ring of children who all fall down is part of the song itself. The popular claim that it encodes a coded memory of the plague is folklore about folklore: historians have found no real evidence for it, and the rhyme is far younger than the Black Death.

Scarborough Fair

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About Scarborough Fair
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Scarborough Fair is an old English ballad with medieval roots, part of a family of songs about impossible tasks set between former lovers. It shares ancestry with “The Elfin Knight,” and the herb refrain of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme has carried through many versions. Its fame today owes a great deal to Simon and Garfunkel’s 1966 recording, though the song is centuries older than that.

Tom Dooley

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About Tom Dooley
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Tom Dooley is an Appalachian murder ballad drawn from a real case: Tom Dula, a North Carolina man hanged in 1868 for the killing of Laura Foster. Mountain singers kept his story alive for decades, and in 1958 the Kingston Trio’s recording turned the old ballad into a national hit that helped set off the folk revival.

Folk Songs on 6 Hole Ocarina Tabs

Comin' Thro' the Rye

About Comin’ Thro’ the Rye #

Do As I'm Doing

About Do As I’m Doing #

Edelweiss

About Edelweiss #

For He is a Jolly Good Fellow

About For He is a Jolly Good Fellow #

Kumbayah

About Kumbayah #

Lullaby of Takeda

About Lullaby of Takeda #

Ring Around the Rosy

About Ring Around the Rosy #

Scarborough Fair

About Scarborough Fair #

Tom Dooley

About Tom Dooley #

About Comin’ Thro’ the Rye
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About Do As I’m Doing
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About Edelweiss
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About For He is a Jolly Good Fellow
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About Kumbayah
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About Lullaby of Takeda
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About Ring Around the Rosy
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About Scarborough Fair
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About Tom Dooley
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