Myanmar Story of the Rainbow

I asked the 10 grade class I’d shared the story of Noah’s rainbow with to share a story with me, and with different students sharing a sentence at a time with a lot of fill-in by Aung, this is their story of the rainbow:

Myanmar Story of the Rainbow

There was once a princess whose mother died in childbirth so she was considered unlucky, and the king built a palace for her to live outside the Royal Palace.  One day a prince was visiting her village and fell in love with her.  His father did not want him to be with the princess and forbade the boatmen to ferry him across the river to see her.  So the prince traveled across in the mouth of a large mythical crocodile.  However the crocodile had an old female crocodile enemy, who knew that if something happened to his son because of the crocodile, the king would destroy him.   She disguised herself as a woman, becoming a maid to the princess, and told her to ask the prince to prove his love to her by letting her sleep on his right side—which is considered to bring bad luck to a man.  She asked him, and apparently he did. And the next time he crossed in the crocodile’s mouth the crocodile forgot he was there and swam underwater so long that the prince died.  The princess was heartbroken, and died. The smoke from the funeral pyres of prince and princess on the opposite sides of the river rose into the air and formed a rainbow over the river; thus they united in death.