Observe him as his watch observes his clock,
And true as turquoise in the dear lord’s ring,
Look well or ill with him.
The ring given to Camball, by his sister Canace (Faëry Queen, book iv.), had not only the virtue of staunching wounds, but of restoring the weariness of the spirit and the wasting of the bodily powers in battle:
Through working of the stone therein y-set.
When the murder of Andrew of Hungary, husband of Joanna Queen of Naples, had been resolved upon, the deed was effected in this wise: the royal couple being absent from their capital on a hunting expedition, it was reported that despatches had arrived from Naples which required instant attention; and when allured by the false intelligence from his apartment into the corridor, he was attacked by the assassins. But as they believed that a ring given him by his mother was a talisman against death by sword or poison, they tied a silken cord round his neck, and completed the work of strangulation by pushing him out of the window.
Various other curious properties have been attributed to rings, either by the credulous fancy of the populace, or the creative fancy of poets. Everyone has heard of Gyges, King of Lydia, who had a ring which was said to possess the virtue of rendering him invisible when he turned it in his hand, without depriving him of the power of seeing others. In later days, there was a tradition that one Keddie, a tailor, found in a cavern in the hill of Kinnoul, near Perth, a ring possessing a similar property to that of Gyges. This gothic version of the classic tale is told by Sir Walter Scott, in a note to his “Fair Maid of Perth.” In the story of the Tartar king, “Cambuscan bold,” it is related that when the monarch was sitting at a feast on the anniversary of his birthday, a knight came riding into the hall on a steed of brass,
Upon his thombe he had of gold a ring;
which he brought along with a mirror to Canace, the king’s daughter, from the King of Arabie and Inde. She was told that the virtue of this “queinte ring” when borne on her thumb, or carried in her purse, consisted in enabling her to understand the language of birds, to reply in a manner intelligible to them, and to know the medicinal powers of all plants.[1] In Wilhelm Meister’s Travels, the story of the New Melusina relates how the daughter of Eckwald, king of the dwarfs, waxed by virtue of a monstrous ring, that lay in the royal treasury, to the full dimensions of a mortal. It took four-and-twenty dwarfs to lift it; but it no more than fitted her finger when she had attained the stature of a mortal. The same ring had had the opposite property of transforming a man to the size of a pigmy, as the garrulous barber experienced who had the fortune to become Melusina’s husband. An instance of the supernatural powers popularly reputed to belong to particular rings may be found in Fletcher’s “Loyal Subject,”—a play first performed about 1618. A ring is represented as given by the Duke of Muscovia to Alinda, his sister’s waiting-maid; the posy was, “The jewel’s set within.” Alinda smiles on receiving it, from thinking “what strange spells these rings have, and how they work with some.” Afterwards, she affects to feel its influence, and exclaims, “Sure there’s a witchcraft in this ring!” We may quit this part of the subject by reminding the classical scholar that the Greeks had a scheme of divination by rings enchanted, or constructed after some position of the stars; and this they called Δακτυλομαντεία.
From the earliest times of which we have any record, the ring was held emblematic of power and authority. We hear of honourable place being conferred by the simple gift of a ring, just as the British Chancellor receives his appointment by the mere delivery of the Great Seal. Alexander the Macedonian, when stretched on his death-bed, drew the ring from his finger, and gave it to Perdiccas; thereby intimating, it is thought, that he bequeathed his vast empire to that General, and appointed him his successor. Perdiccas conceived that his title would be fortified by another ring, for he married Alexander’s sister, Cleopatra. His competitors, however, were too strong for him; and, after he had been ruined in fortune, he was assassinated in his tent by his own officers. Who took possession of Alexander’s ring, history does not inform us. It is well known that the Roman knights wore a gold ring, presented to them at the public expense. It is an instance of the humanity or the dissimulation of Julius Cæsar, that when the Egyptians, after the battle of Pharsalia, brought to him Pompey’s head and ring (he was a knight) Cæsar wept. Perhaps he recollected with tenderness the intimacy of their former friendship; perhaps he was suddenly struck by the idea of the instability of human grandeur; perhaps he thought the act would tell upon his soldiers. When a Roman slave received his liberty, his master bestowed upon him a white robe, a cap, and a ring. In a curious account of the Ceremonies and Services at the English Court in the time of Henry VIII., printed from an ancient manuscript in the Antiquarian Repertory, there are some directions as to the proceedings in the creation of a prince. “The prince shall be brought in and presented before the kinge in his estat, in the abit of a prince, between two dukes, before him his sword borne by a duke or an erle, on the left side the ringe. The kinge shall first put upon him his sword, after the ringe on the left finger.” A ring formed part of the peculiar attire of the Roman bishops; and in our own church it still appears at the ceremonies which take place on the occasion of an episcopal investment. The privilege of wearing a ring became an object of ambition to haughty abbots, who witnessed with an ill grace any marks of superior dignity on the persons of others. In the records of the abbey of Glastonbury, there is a grant from Pope Alexander VI. to the abbot, of the right to wear a mitre and a ring; and the muniment room of other monasteries could show similar documents.
How the ring came to be used at the celebration of the marriage rite does not clearly appear, but it is believed that at first it formed no part of- ↑ Chaucer, “Squire’s Tale.”
