At the opening of The Muppet Movie Kermit the frog sang:

"Why are there so many songs about rainbows?"

And that got me wondering: Just how many songs are there about rainbows, and are they as deeply ingrained in our common culture as the song suggests? There was only one song that popped into my head, and that was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", and although it is a powerful song, it didn't strike me as all that many. So I did a search of the Digitrad, and came up with this list of "Rainbow" songs.

2 are gospel "Cousins" of each other: Sowing on the Mountain and Sinner, You'd Better Get Ready, that mention the rainbow as the sign from God to Noah, and another, Mule on the Mount, is a chain-gang song, which has the enigmatic line "I got a rainbow wrapped and tied around my shoulder". But most of them seem to be modern (latter half of the 20th Century, and written by singer-songwriters, rather than Anon.).

So here's my question: when did the rainbow get to be the symbol of the realm of personal happiness and dreams, as is suggested by "The Rainbow Song" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"? And can we trace its evolution as such through song?