Star Light, Star Bright

"Star Light, Star Bright"
Roud #16339
Song
Written	USA
Published	Late 19thC
Form	Nursery rhyme
Writer	Traditional
Language	English

"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,

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. Starlight Starbright is also found in Madonna's 1983 single Lucky Star.^[3] The song and tradition seem to have reached Britain by the early twentieth century and have since spread worldwide.^[2]

Notes

1. R. Gerlings, Hey, Diddle, Diddle and Other Best-Loved Rhymes (Windmill Books, 2009), p. 32.
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.