Star Light, Star Bright

"Star Light, Star Bright"
Nursery rhyme
Published Late 19th century

"Star Light, Star Bright" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 16339.

Lyrics

The lyrics usually conform to the following:

Star light, star bright,
The first star I see tonight;
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Get the wish I wish tonight.[1]

Origins

The superstition of hoping for wishes granted when seeing a shooting or falling star may date back to the ancient world.[2] Wishing on the first star seen may also predate this rhyme, which first began to be recorded in late nineteenth-century America. [3] The song and tradition seem to have reached Britain by the early twentieth century and have since spread worldwide.[2]

"Star Light, Star Bright" is found in Madonna's 1983 single Lucky Star.

The lines "Wish I may, wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight" are also found in Metallica's song "King Nothing".

Notes

  1. ↑ R. Gerlings, Hey, Diddle, Diddle and Other Best-Loved Rhymes (Windmill Books, 2009), p. 32.
  2. 1 2 I. Opie and M. Tatem, A Dictionary of Superstitions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 175-6.
  3. ↑ R. Webster, The Encyclopedia of Superstitions (Llewellyn Worldwide, 2008), p. 245.
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