Lyrics omitted. The annotations below are reproduced by permission of David Dodd; the song lyrics themselves are copyrighted and are not reproduced here. Read them at the official source: dead.net/songs.
Musical details:
Recorded on
First performance: August 31, 1979, at Glens Falls Civic Center, Glens Falls, N.Y. "Saint" appeared in the penultimate spot in the first set, following "Lost Sailor" and preceding "Deal".
The song title was used, at Steve Silberman's suggestion, as the title of Sheila Weller's 1997 book Saint of Circumstance: The Untold Story Behind the Alex Kelley Rape Case: Growing Up Rich and Out of Control.
In several mythologies the rainbow is a bridge connecting earth to a supernatural otherworld; for example, the Norse Bifrost, which connects heaven and earth and is guarded by Heimdall, is identified in the Prose Edda with the rainbow..." (p. 361)[and later in the same entry:]
...a more general and enduring belief in Europe is that the end of the rainbow marks valuable buried treasure, generally a crock of gold.
Other references to rainbows are found in "That's It For the Other One" (twice), "The Eleven", "Crazy Fingers", "What's Become of the Baby?", "The Music Never Stopped", and "Estimated Prophet".
In Greek mythology, sea nymphs whose sweet music lured hearers to their death at the Sirens' hands; they embody the concept of the fatal supernatural lover. (p. 1013.)Eventually, Orpheus (see "Reuben and Cerise") triumphed over them by playing more sweetly than they, and they were turned into a group of rocks in the Mediterranean.
The title of a 2003 novel by Max Ludington, about a Deadhead circa 1985.