Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star is next to Rock-a-bye Baby the most famous English lullaby .
The author Jane Taylor (1783-1824) published the text for the first time in 1806 in the children's poetry collection Rhymes for the Nursery . It consists of 20 to five quatrains combined trochaic four lifters . It is sung to the melody of the French folk song Ah! vous dirai-je, maman , which is better known in the German-speaking world for the Christmas carol, the morning comes Santa Claus .
melody
text
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Then the traveler in the dark
Thanks you for your tiny sparks;
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye
Till the sun is in the sky.
As your bright and tiny spark
lights the traveler in the dark,
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
Adaptations
A parody of Taylor's verses is found in the seventh chapter of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865), in which the mad hatter recites the following poem:
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!
In 1958 the American doo-wop group The Elegants came with a musically and lyrically adapted version under the title Little Star at number one on the rhythm and blues charts of Billboard magazine and number one on the Italian charts. The Italian-born group members Vito Picone and Arthur Venosa had "ingeniously adapted the lullaby and polished it up to perfection".
literature
- Timothy Morton : "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth . In: Romantic Circles (E-Zine), November 2001.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Edward R. Engel: White and Still All Right! , Crackerjack Pr 1977 (quoted from the liner notes of the album Vito Picone & The Elegants , Apt 1000)