- What other stories are there about the rainbow?
- Has anyone discovered the end of a rainbow and whom?
- Why do people attempt to look for the end of a rainbow?
Ravishing Rainbow
After a cramped day at school, you can’t wait to jump up onto your bicycle and ride and see the sunset. As you pedal off with your friends, you notice it is slightly drizzling, but the sun is shining.
“Ooh! A rainbow!” your friends exclaim. As you lift your eyes to the sky, you see that they are right. A myriad of colours fill the sky. “We should try find the end;we could be rich!” a friend jokes. As you watch the colours blend into the blue background, your mind suddenly changes channels and flicks to a picture of a leprechaun and a pot of gold.
If you’re like a vast majority of people in the world, you have experienced the presence of a rainbow. After all, it isn’t the most rare occasion for it to rain at the same time when the sun is shining? Seeing a rainbow may seem like nothing special. However, the mere fact that it shows up in so many cultures reveals its importance.
Cultures
Did you know that the rainbow is mentioned in more than 10 different cultures(which are ideas and customs of a group of people)?According to Wikipedia, the article suggests that there is at least 15 cultures that include the rainbow into their myths. The popularity of rainbows in so many cultures will lead you to wonder, why are rainbows so important to humans? Have you heard of the most famous rainbow myth of all?It is the Irish myth with the pot of gold and leprechaun. The biggest reason why people still look for the end of the rainbow today is because they want to honour the Irish myth, which is a traditional tale that concerns the early history of a culture/explaining a natural phenomenon. People generally still look for the end of the rainbow during St Patrick’s Day. (If you want to make your own rainbow, try following this article!)
Irish: Leprechauns, Lucky Charms and Lots o’ Gold
The story about the pot of gold started with a folktale, which is a story that started in a popular culture about an old man and lady that were struck by poverty and one day, met a leprechaun who promised to grant them 1 wish. He promised to come the next day to grant the wish. The next day, the couple could not choose 1 wish and the leprechaun scolded them for being greedy. However, he felt sorry for the couple and mentioned to the pot of gold which is how the fable was made. (story taken from “Why People Look for a Pot of Gold at the End of a Rainbow.”)
If you were eating Lucky Charms cereal and thought that the green man in front was a leprechaun, you were thinking along the right lines!
End of the rainbow
But you also wonder occasionally wonder whether there is anything more to the rainbow than a green dwarf and a pot of gold. So, how do rainbows impact humans? Finding the end of the rainbow is a fascinating part of the modern day rainbow myths. In fact, in a Mail Online article “Found: The end of the rainbow... but there's no pot of gold,” I found a text about a man called Jason Erdkamp, an amateur photographer stumbling upon the end of a rainbow. In the picture, the rainbow was on the freeway and there was no pot of gold. The article acknowledges that he was definitely lucky to be able to capture the end of the rainbow, much less in a picture.
Wonder Words (13)
- Humans
- Irish
- Myth
- Luck
- Treasure
- Gold
- Mythology
- History
- Culture
- Folklore
- Leprechaun
- Rainbow
Connect!
So why do we chase the rainbow? I developed a connection from the rainbow to the thoughts I had accumulated because scientifically, the rainbow is made up of fragments of light to create the colors. However, humans have been known as, “creatures of light”. I think this is fascinating because maybe when we look at a rainbow, we generally feel cheerful and that is possibly the treasure from the rainbow.
Finally...
In conclusion, the myth of the rainbows are truly fascinating and it is unbelievable how one symbol spreads across such a wide array of cultures and appear as the same object, but depicted with different meanings. I guess it just goes to show you the human desire to find the light.
Dictionary definitions are given credit to Dictionary.com
Credits:
Created with images by mcdlttx - "Rainbow"