Traditional 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.[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]
In popular culture
It is used in the 1940 Disney film Pinocchio and related Disney media.
It is used in the 1953 Sci-Fi film It Came from Outer Space.
It was used as the title of a 1953 short story by Alfred Besser, and later for a 1976 collection of his work
The first and third verse is recited by Lenore Karidian to Captain Kirk in the 1966 Star Trek original series episode "Conscience of the King"
It is paraphrased in the 1971 song Pearl from the album People Like Us by The Mamas & The Papas
It is featured in the chorus of Dave Loggins’ 1979 song “If I Had My Wish Tonight,” which was a Top 40 hit for David Lasley in 1982.
The first half is featured in the chorus of Madonna's 1983 song Lucky Star.
It is partially quoted in the song "Take Me Away" on Blue Öyster Cult's 1983 album The Revölution by Night.
The rhyme is quoted and referenced on Metallica's 1996 single “King Nothing”, released for the album Load.
It is also quoted in the chorus of an unreleased Simple Minds track Space, taken from the album Our Secrets Are The Same which was recorded in 2000 and was not commercially released due to a dispute with their record company. However, the album was included in the 2004 Silver Box boxset.
In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, it is used as the plot's basis, the quest for the Wishing Star, in addition to providing deeper meaning to the film's central themes. It is read verbatim in the opening and repeated later on.
It is also quoted in Nicki Minaj's 2023 song Last Time I Saw You.
Notes
- ^ R. Gerlings, Hey, Diddle, Diddle and Other Best-Loved Rhymes (Windmill Books, 2009), p. 32.
- ^ a b I. Opie and M. Tatem, A Dictionary of Superstitions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 175-6.
- ^ R. Webster, The Encyclopedia of Superstitions (Llewellyn Worldwide, 2008), p. 245.
