The Pot Of Gold At The End Of The Rainbow

Photo by Wing-Chi Poon taken at Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada, published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

When I was a child and my mother would espy a rainbow, she was almost sure to comment on how there was a pot of gold at its end. The “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” is a commonplace fancy and an exceptionally charming piece of folklore.

Where did this fanciful story come from? And might it have any significance to an investment strategy?

The pot of gold at rainbow’s end is inextricably linked to the leprechauns, and reliable information about their folkloric roots is as elusive and maddening as are leprechauns themselves. Irish Central cites the two historians of folklore and European paganism I have consistently found most reliable, the Matthews:

According to the book “The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures,” by John and Caitlin Matthews, the leprechaun legend can be traced back to eighth-century tales of water spirits called “luchorpán,” meaning small body. The legend eventually evolved into a mischievous household fairy said to haunt cellars and drink heavily.

Alicia McDermott, writing at Ancient Origins, another reasonably rigorous journal, writes:

Leprechauns are thought to have been one of the many types of inhabitants of the fairy forts or fairy rings in ancient Ireland. It has been suggested that the merry tricksters of today may even be a modern…