Star Light, Star Bright

Template:Short description {{#invoke:other uses|otheruses}} Template:Infobox song "Star Light, Star Bright" is an English language nursery rhyme of American origin. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 16339.

Lyrics

The lyrics usually conform to the following:

Star light, star bright,

First star I see tonight;

I wish I may, I wish I might

Have the wish I wish tonight.<ref>R. Gerlings, Hey, Diddle, Diddle and Other Best-Loved Rhymes (Windmill Books, 2009), p. 32.</ref>

Origin

According to folklorists Iona and Peter Opie, the superstition of hoping for wishes granted when seeing a shooting or falling star may date back to the ancient world.<ref name=Opie1989/> It was also mentioned in The Encyclopedia of Superstitions that wishing on the first star seen may also predate this rhyme.<ref name="Webster">R. Webster, The Encyclopedia of Superstitions (Llewellyn Worldwide, 2008), p. 245.</ref> The song "Star Light, Star Bright" first began to be recorded in mid/late nineteenth-century America.<ref name="Webster"/> It can be found in works dating to at least 1866 as the song appears in "Swallows on the Wing O'er Garden Springs of Delight" by William Furniss.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It can also be found in an 1873 article from "To-day" magazine where the song is linked to fortunes.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The song and tradition seem to have reached Britain by the early twentieth century and have since spread worldwide.<ref name=Opie1989>I. Opie and M. Tatem, A Dictionary of Superstitions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 175-6.</ref>