As you may have noticed, sometimes I can be a geek, especially with things I am fond of. I also happen to be very interested in certain songs' history. You can see its roots, the misconceptions that pass around as the truth, the song references in popular culture and so on. Today, I explore the popular nursery rhyme Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

The investigation and publishing of this post were made by my geeky side, so bear with it ;)

~ "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is a popular English nursery rhyme by Jane Taylor. The poem was first published (as "The Star") in 1806 in Rhymes for the Nursery, a collection of poems by Taylor and her sister Ann. It is often sung to the tune of the French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman" (it was far from a children's rhyme & originated in the first half of the 18th century).

~ Many think that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the original composer of this melody, a misconception reinforced by its appearance as a "correct answer" in the original edition of Trivial Pursuit.  Mozart composed 12 variations on a folk melody which was popular in Europe long before the Taylor sisters wrote their poem. (source for the last sentence)

~ Many songs in various languages have been based on the "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman" melody. In English, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" shares its melody with the "Alphabet Song" from 1834 and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep".

~ The song is a popular target for parodies. "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Bat", a parody of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" recited by the Mad Hatter during the mad tea-party, in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventure In Wonderland. It reads:

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,

The Mad Hatter is interrupted in his recitation. "The Bat" was the nickname of Professor Bartholomew Price, one of the Dons at Oxford, a former teacher of Carroll's and well known to the Liddell family. (follow this link to hear its recitation, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1972, starring Fiona Fullerton, Peter Sellers, Robert Helpmann and Dudley More)

~ The Elegants (a doo-wop band that was started in 1958 in South Beach, Staten Island) released a single adapted from this song called Little Star, which made #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1958".

(source wiki, unless stated otherwise)

The Elegants - Little Star:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, with Indian flavour, for a chuckle: