Folk & Traditional Song Chords
The backbone of every campfire and session set — ballads and traveling songs polished by generations of singers. Every entry is traditional and public-domain. Open any song for its chords over lyrics, fretboard diagrams, key, tempo, and source attribution.
Singable melodies over open-chord progressions — from the two chords of Down in the Valley to the six of The Water Is Wide.
Folk & traditional songs with chords
Songs passed from singer to singer
A folk song is music passed on by ear, often with no known composer, which is why it turns up in many versions and none of them is the authoritative one. Shenandoah seems to have begun with fur traders paddling canoes down the Missouri River in the early 19th century, and by the mid-1800s sailors were singing it as a shanty. The words of Wayfaring Stranger were in print by 1858, in a Christian songbook. Cecil Sharp put the modern words of The Water Is Wide together in 1906, from older sources in southern England, and published them in Folk Songs from Somerset. Scarborough Fair is a northern English ballad with something in common with the Scottish ballad The Elfin Knight, which is traced back at least to 1670.
Down in the Valley asks for only G and D7, and Red River Valley adds G7 and C to those two. Shenandoah moves through G, C, Em and D. Wayfaring Stranger and Scarborough Fair are both charted in E minor, the first over Em, Am and B7 and the second over Em, G, D, Am and C. The Water Is Wide takes six chords in D.
Fingerpicking suits the slow minor tunes: thumb on the bass strings, fingers on the top three, a chord to the bar. Strum the two-chord Down in the Valley gently, and let the singer set the pace.
Why these songs are free to play
Every entry is strictly public-domain or traditional, source-attributed, and charted as chords — so you can learn, play, and share without any copyright worry.