ABOUT THE RAINBOW.
We all know the Scriptural interpretation of the rainbow; but mythology has also had its say upon the same theme. The Scandinavians thought it was a celestial bridge, by which the gods passed to and fro; it was doomed to break down at the last day. Children are still sometimes told that if they will walk to the spot from which the rainbow springs they will find a pot of gold. There was an idea that the rainbow draws up water by means of two golden dishes, which it sometimes lets fall, and which have been secured by lucky finders. A Black Forest legend asserted that the rainbow draws its water by a golden goblet, and that a shoe thrown into a rainbow would return filled with gold. In Servia the folk used to say that to pass beneath a rainbow changed the sex—made a man a woman, or the reverse. The Suabians, when there is a double rainbow, say that it is the devil trying to imitate the work of God.