Beautiful Star (Star of the Evening)

DESCRIPTION: "Beautiful star in heav'n so bright, Softly falls thy silvr'y light, As thou movest from earth afar, Star of the evening, beautiful star. Beautiful star, Beautiful star, Star of the evening, beautiful star." The singer asks the star to watch over his love
AUTHOR: James M. Sayles
EARLIEST DATE: 1855 (sheet music published by J. H. Hidley of Albany)
KEYWORDS: nonballad love
FOUND IN: Britain
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Heart-Songs, pp. 68-69, "Beautiful Star in Heaven so Bright" (1 text, 1 tune)
Dime-Song-Book #1/72, p. 62 and #1/64 p. 38, "Evening Star" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Florence Milner, "Poems in Alice in Wonderland" (1903), now reprinted in Robert Phillips, editor, _Aspects of Alice_, 1971 (references are to the 1977 Vintage paperback), pp. 250-251, ""Star of the Evening" (1 text, with "Alice"-related context)
Edward Wakeling, editor, _Lewis Carroll's Diaries: The Private Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson_, Volume 4, May 1862 to September 1864, Lewis Carroll Society, 1997, pp. 110-111, n. 79, "Star of the Evening" (1 excerpt plus an excerpt of Dodgson's parody, in the context where Dodgson heard it sung by the Liddells)
Roud #13751
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(4352), "Beautiful Star," H. Such (London), 1849-1862; same (?) sheet as Harding B 11(4352); also Harding B 19(10), "Beautuful (sic.) star! in heaven so bright " [another trimmed version as 2806 b.9(272), another as 2806 c.15(96)]; Harding B 11(4067), "Beautiful Star," J. Harkness (Preston), 1840-1866; same (?) sheet as Harding B 11(4068); Firth b.26(74); Harding B 11(1669); 2806 c.13(81), "Beautiful Star," James Lindsay (Glasgow), after 1851
SAME TUNE:
Experience of Hokitika, part 2 ("Perilous bar, to suitors a blight, Filling new chums with terrible fright") (by Charles R. Thatcher) (Hoskins-GoldfieldBalladeer-LifeAndTimes-Charles-R-Thatcher, pp. 173-174)
NOTES [229 words]: This obviously isn't a folk song, but there are slight hints of it in oral tradition -- including the fact that the Liddell sisters sang it for Lewis Carroll. Which inspired its far more famous parody (which is the reason I list it here): Carroll used it as the basis for "Beautiful Soup" ("Soup of the evening, Beautiful Soup"), as sung by the Mock Turtle.
How much more famous? Granger's Index to Poetry has two references to "Beautiful Star." Both are books of parodies linking it to "Beautiful Soup" -- which has *five* entries in Granger's.
For further details, one may consult Carroll/Gardner, p. 108
Alice Liddell Hargreaves (as she came to be) also referred to singing this song. In an account repeated in Jones/Gladstone, p. 102, she mentions how she and her sisters sand "Star of the evening, beautiful star," "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," and "Will you walk into my parlour?" on their expeditions with Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and the Rev. Robinson Duckworth.
The song seems to have been very popular with parodists (which is an indication of its popularity in the late 1850s); Carroll/Green, p. 263, notes that J. H. Byron parodied it in 1860 in a burlesque "Cinderella."
Dime-Song-Book #9, p. 8, has a poem "Star of the Twilight." It looks like a derivative, or continuation, of this song, but it doesn't seem to be traditional in its own right. - RBW
Bibliography

Carroll/Gardner: The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition by Lewis Carroll with Introduction and Notes by Martin Gardner, W. W. Norton, 2000
Carroll/Green: Lewis Carroll, Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, edited with an introduction and notes by Roger Lancelyn Green, 1971 (I use the 2008 Oxford University Press paperback edition)
Jones/Gladstone: Jo Elwyn Jones & J. Francis Gladstone, The Red King's Dream or Lewis Carroll in Wonderland, 1995 (I use the 1996 Pimlico edition)

Last updated in version 6.6
File: nnBeaSta

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