"My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky: So it was when my life began; So it is now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, or let me die!"

These emphatic words by Wordsworth describe the way many have thought of rainbows for thousands of years.

Ever since Noah and the flood, people have been curious about rainbows. What do they mean? How are they formed? From fearful people to awestruck citizens, rainbows turn heads skyward. In fact, some of the myths people believed about rainbows are more interesting than the truth.

Irish legends speak of leprechauns and pots of gold hidden at the end of rainbows. While a nice big pot of gold would come in handy for anyone, especially for a poor college student, there is a problem. Rainbows appear to move as the observer does, so it is impossible to reach the end of a rainbow. Unfortunately, no one has ever gotten rich by finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

In medieval Germany, many believed that for forty years before the end of the world, no rainbows would appear. Thus, people were relieved to see a rainbow; as the saying goes: "So the rainbow appear, the world has no fear, until thereafter forty years."

Many cultures all over the world believed that rainbows led to God. Some tribes of North American Indians called the rainbow a "Pathway of Souls." In Japan, some refer to a rainbow as the "Floating Bridge of Heaven." In Hawaii and Polynesia, myths call the rainbow the "path to the upperworld." People in the Austrian Alps say righteous souls go to heaven via the rainbow. A myth of New Zealand said that dead chiefs went up a rainbow to the afterlife.

Rainbows have also been used to predict good hunting or sailing weather. "A rainbow in the eve: put thine head in the sheave, a rainbow in the morrow; go take thy bow, and arrow," told hunters that morning rainbows meant better weather was coming. "A rainbow in the morning is the sailor's warning; a rainbow at night is the sailor's delight," told sailors the same thing.

Other groups of people, though, were terrified of rainbows. Long ago, Zulus thought that a rainbow was an enormous supernatural serpent. They called these rainbows "snake bows" and believed that they came out after a rainfall to eat unsuspecting humans and cattle.

Throughout history, rainbows have been considered either very good luck or very bad luck. Some say it is bad luck if a rainbow's end rest on water. Others say it is good luck if the ends of the rainbow rest on land. Similarly, a rainbow that appears the day a child is born is considered good luck. On the other hand, in the past, Slavonic people believed that looking at the base of a rainbow would bring death. Others believed that pointing at the highest point of a rainbow would bring bad luck (anything from being struck by lightning to developing an ulcer to losing a finger).

Interestingly enough, although rainbows are scientifically explainable optical phenomena that occur when white light is refracted into its spectrum of colors, the dictionary still defines rainbows as Noah did: a symbol of hope.

Essay by Amy E. Davis