Louise T. Guinther

If there’s anyone out there who doesn’t believe in magic, I invite you to spend a summer evening in my backyard. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison were pretty clever with their experiments in lighting and lightning, but God is the cleverest inventor of all, and our human innovations don’t hold a candle to the army of fireflies that transform my little patch of greensward into an entomological singles bar. From late June to early August, the hedges are a-twinkle with them from just before dusk until full darkness falls. If you happen to step out onto the screen porch just as the enchantment is beginning, you are sure to be mesmerized.

If you can’t get excited by these tiny green-gold aerialists, with their infinite variety of flight patterns, I can’t imagine what would turn you on. As they dart and weave their way through the heavy summer air, producing patterns of dots, dashes and swirls that look a little like illuminated arabic, I flash back to childhood pilgrimages to the circus at Madison Square Garden, where children in a state of electric excitement waved their mini-flashlight souvenirs in the darkness to rhythms of their own devising.

For me, lightning bugs provide an instant mode of time travel back to the very best days of my youth, when I believed in everything and never doubted that the best things in life were free. My sister and I and our little friends would capture the poor creatures carefully in our hands and put them briefly into jars, but my softhearted mother taught us very early on that it would be kindest to examine them only for a moment and then let them back out to do their thing.

Their thing, of course, is a mating ritual, and it has inspired numerous songwriters to evoke the romantic flitting and flashing in musical form. The Temptations eponymous number doesn’t really have any firefly sound effects, but its message of humans borrowing a sense of  tranquility from the natural world does suggest the effect of a quiet summer’s night.

“Love is like a firefly,” from Rudolf Friml’s operetta The Firefly, provides an aural imitation of the flash and glimmer of these winged charmers, and Jeannette MacDonald supplies every bit of the requisite vocal razzle-dazzle, not to mention the effect of her glittery costume.

Paul Lincke put a firefly number into his Lysistrata operetta at the turn of the twentieth century. Here is it, charmingly sung by one Liane Rudolph. (Gotta love the word “Gefunkel.”)

Wenn die Nacht sich niedersenkt
auf Flur und Halde,
Manch ein Liebespärchen lenkt
den Schritt zum Walde.

Doch man kann im Wald zu zwein
sich leicht verirren.
Deshalb, wie Laternen klein,
Glühwürmchen schwirren.

Und es weiset Steg und Busch
uns leuchtend ihr Gefunkel,
Da tauchts auf, und dort, husch, husch,
sobald der Abend dunkel.

Glühwürmchen, Glühwürmchen flimmre, 
Glühwürmchen, Glühwürmchen schimmre, 
Führe uns auf rechten Wegen,
führe uns dem Glück entgegen.

Glühwürmchen, Glühwürmchen flimmre, 
Glühwürmchen, Glühwürmchen schimmre, 
Gib uns schützend dein Geleit
zur Liebesseligkeit.

When the night descends
Upon field and slope,
Many a pair of lovers
Make their way to the forest.

But two people in the forest
Can easily lose their way.
That's why, like little lanterns,
Fireflies flit about.

And bridge and bush reveal
Their shining, sparkling light.
It glints here and there — hush, hush — 
As soon as twilight falls.

Glowworm, glowworm, flicker.
Glowworm, glowworm, shimmer.
Lead us on the right path.
Lead us to happiness.

Glowworm, glowworm, flicker.
Glowworm, glowworm, shimmer.
Take us under your wing and guide us
Lead us to love's blessedness.

Does it sound familiar?  According to Wikipedia, it was originally translated into English by Lilla Cayley Robinson, but it was Johnny Mercer’s brilliant expanded version, sung by the inimitable Mills Brothers, that made it an all-American hit and captured my mother’s heart.

Mom and I liked to serenade the lightning bugs with it from the back porch at dusk, as we sipped our cocktails in the gloaming. Listen hard so as not to miss any of the wordplay. Mom is smiling down from heaven, I am sure.