FINGER-RING LORE.*

It tenni labor, at tennis non gloria." The first tendency of the average reader at the sight of this handsome volume is to exclaim, "What ! all that book about finger-rings ?" But the fact is, that for an exhaustive treatment of the subject many such volumes would be required. All races of mankind, agreeing in little else, have agreed in treating the fingers as pegs for the dis- play of rings ; and the modes of wearing them have been as diverse as men's dresses or their creeds. The Jews wore them on the right hand, as, according to Pliny, did the ancient Britons ; the Egyptians on the left ; our own ancestors wore them some- times on the thumb, witness Falstaff's boast that in former days he "could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring ;" and the Roman exquisites of the early Empire wore them on almost every joint of every finger. "The Indians," we are told, "prefer rings with large, floriated faces, spreading over three fingers like a shield." The Egyptians made them of amber, of ivory, or; most durable of all materials, blue porcelain ; the Spartans and the Romans of the Republic, of iron ; rings of brass, of bronze, of a single precious stone, are common in all the great collections, and rush-rings were familiar to the libertines of Elizabethan England. Artists of every school have left upon rings the impress of their own personality, as clearly as Pheidias upon marble, Raphael :upon canvas, medizeval architects upon Salisbury or York. The Egyptians stamped their rings with an indelible solidity and a strange symbolism. Greek work in this, as in other branches of art, is a heritage to all time. The art of the Etruscans, whatever view be taken of their language and descent, is distinctively Aryan in type ; their jewellery, with its exquisite granulation, is, in many respects, unrivalled, and lingered on in the moun- tains of the Abruzzi for twenty-five centuries, only to yield up the secret of its processes to a diligent inquirer in our own clay. The Celtic, the Merovingian, the Anglo-Saxon epochs each had its own more or less sharply defined character- istics, that at once betray their origin to the practised eye. In * Finger-Ring Lore; Historical, Legendary, Anecdotal. By 'William Rama, F.S.A. London: Cbatto and Windue. our own day, under the influence of the study of antique rings and jewellery, the goldsmith's art is rising again from the degradation into which it had fallen ; the ancient conception of ,rixya, as common to the artist and the handicraftsman, is re- vived; form and design are again something, while not so many years ago material was all in all. To deal adequately with so wide a subject obviously requires great knowledge and great literary skill. How does Mr. Jones show himself to be furnished for the task?

We must say frankly that while his book cannot fail to give the reader much entertainment and some instruction, it has many defects. He does not give what the student of a book of this kind—which is not, we imagine, intended mainly for the specialist — so much requires, namely, such a sketch of the characteristics of each period of the art, with a summary statement of its chief landmarks, as might serve him as a clue to the labyrinth. He lacks historical method. Egyptians and English, Romans and Lombards, vanish and reappear

with but little regard to chronological order. Mr. Jones, too, falls into a good many minor errors in obvious matters, which suggest a doubt as to his accuracy on points where we have neither the leisure nor the knowledge necessary to test him. He speaks of Sir Horace as Sir " Robert " Mann St. Isidore is credited with a treatise "De Ecclesiasticis Officirtes," and but too many of the Latin quotations would have made Macaulay's schoolboy "stare and gasp." "Cracked in the ring" is surely a metaphor drawn, not from the finger-ring, but from the old coins in use before the invention of milling, which, when cracked within the ring, ceased to be current. There are too many repeti- tions. A sentence on p. 78 recurs almost word for word at p. 84, and on p. 424 Charles the Bold sends a diamond cut by Berghem to Louis XI., the same story being retold on P. 450, where Charles is styled "the Rash," and the jeweller employed by him figures as Louis de Berquem. Many other instances might be adduced. But with all its faults, and these we hope to see, in great part, rectified in the next edition, Mr. Jones's book is a great store-house of facts, culled laboriously from many sources, which will be of interest even to the idle reader who brings little previous knowledge or enthusiasm to its perusal. The wood-cuts are abundant and excellent in quality, and the book contains very much that concerns all classes of ring-wearers. We find much to praise in it, but probably its author would not claim for it that it is destined to take its place as a standard work on the subject, and would be fully satisfied with the position which it secures him as an ardent and intelligent amateur. In the brief mention that we shall make of a few of the subjects handled by him, we shall, in accordance with a famous principle, take it for granted that the reviewer of a desultory book may himself be desultory.

Mr. Jones is stronger on the literary side of his subject than the artistic, and his account of the superstitions connected with finger-rings is particularly interesting. The ring of Solomon, on which his possession of his kingdom depended ; the ring of Gyges, which, like the cap of Hzuzles, rendered the wearer invisible ; the "virtuous ring" of Canacee, which, worn upon the thumb or carried in the purse, conferred the power of understanding the speech of birds, and of answering them in their own tongue ; and the part played by the ring in the Arabian Nights, arc ring-superstitions of which the reader needs only to be reminded. The cramp-ring, blessed with a special and solemn service, was supposed down to Reformation times to be a preservative against epilepsy and paralysis (and the supersti- tion yet lingers in some remote country districts) ; the toad-stone

ring protected the wearer against fairies, and a ring with an eye on the bezel against witchcraft and the evil-eye ; special talis-

manic zings secured the owner from the perils of battle and the deep A turquoise worn in a ring foretold by its changes.of colour when any danger was impending over its possessor ; an amethyst served as an antidote against intoxication ; and leprosy, the plague, and

every human ill might be avoided by wearing the appropriate ring. The ancient and widely-spread notion that the reason for wearing the wedding-ring on the third finger of the left hand was that in that finger there was an artery communi- cating directly with the heart is exploded by Sir Thomas

Browne, in one of the most characteristic articles of his Pseudodoxia Epidemica. He is probably right in his con- clusion that that finger was selected "as being least used of

any, as being guarded on either side, and having in most this peculiar condition, that it cannot be extended alone and by itself, but will be accompanied by some finger on either side." Official rings were commonly worn on the right hand, as a token of power and superiority, and episcopal and papal rings are still worn on that hand, on which also the wedding-ring—the prototype of the ecclesiastical, denoting the subjection of the wife and the confi- dence of the husband in entrusting her with his signet—was worn in old times by the Jewish bride. The ancient Jewish wedding- rings, which were commonly the property of the Synagogue, were often of great size, and crowned with a large tower or represen- tation of the Temple.

We turned with lively interest to the long list of " posies " on rings which Mr. Jones has collected. It must be admitted that they are in too many cases hopelessly prosaic and common- place, and not much above the level of the trite inscriptions which so often mar the solemnity of our graveyards. Many— the best—are religious ; many are irrelevant ; some, for example, "The love is true that I 0 U," are vulgar ; one from Mon- mouthshire, though wanting in romance, is certainly to the point,—" If thee dosn't work, thee shasn't eat." "I love and like my choice" is a motto several times repeated. On the whole, we prefer the following to many of the others, as, at all events, expressing a real sentiment :—" My dearest Betty is good and pretty ;" "I did then commit no folly when I married my sweet Molly ;" " 'Tis fit men should not be alone, which made Tom to marry Jone." They managed these things better in England before the Reformation. With that event, or chain of events, in spite of the speedy and glorious outburst of our literature, much of the old light seemed to die out of the life of the people. In- scriptions on bells, the conventional mode of beginning and ending letters, the ordinary phrases of salutation of the middle- class, became more and more unmistakably debased and vulgarised. The Paatons, for instance, would have been ashamed of the poverty of thought and expression here so often manifest.

Rings have been used for many purposes beside that of a token, of a sign of subjection or of lordship, of plighting wedded troth, or of embalming the memory of the dead. One mentioned by Mr. Jones has the bezel studded with sharp points, and was used as a weapon of offence by the peasants of Bavaria. Decade rings, with a number of projecting bosses round the verge, have served the devout instead of a chaplet or rosary. Some, by a cleverly- devised arrangement, have been utilised as sun-dials. Others are in the form of a squirt. Rings have been frequently used as re- ceptacles for poison, and the signet-ring of the infamous Czesar Borgia is still extant, with the slide within which he carried the poison to be administered to unwelcome guests. Key-rings are found of all ages ; and one of these, poisoned in the handle, is said to have been employed with fatal effect by Pope Alexander VI. The story quoted by Mr. Jones of an amateur in Paris who nearly met his death through poison infused into the system by an antique Venetian ring which he had just purchased, is a wholesome warning to our lovers of bric-a-brac.

Mr. Jones gives us the history of scores of rings distinguished either by their own intrinsic qualities or by the fame of their possessors. At Perugia is preserved the alleged wedding-ring of the Virgin and St. Joseph. St. Germain-des-Pres also, before the Revolution, claimed the possession of this inestimable relic. But 4' alas !" writes Mr. King, as quoted in the appendix, "anti- quaries have now remorselessly restored the ownership of gem and portraits to the two nobodies (probably liberti, judging from their names) whose votive legend—'Alpheus with Aretho '—is but too plainly legible in our Greek-reading times." Three rings dispute the honour of being that which was to win the pardon of Elizabeth for her fallen favourite, the Earl of Essex, and the treacherous interception of which was, according to the legend, a mortal blow to the Virgin Queen. Rings belonging to Mary Queen of Scots and Darnley were exhibited at South Kensington in 1872. The ring worn by Charles L on the scaffold, and given by him to Bishop Juxon, was likewise then shown by its owner. It bears the inscription on the bezel, "Behold the ende," and round the edge the motto, which the unfortunate King would have done well to inscribe on his heart of hearts, as well as wear on his finger, "Rather death than false faith." The marriage-ring of

Luther, supposed to have been designed by his friend, Lucas Cranach, has come down to our times, and is probably almost as highly esteemed by many in Germany as the signet-ring discovered at Stratford-on-Avon in 1810, and supposed, on apparently in- controvertible evidence, to have been Shakespeare's, is among

ourselves. Of the last Stuarts few souvenirs beside their rings remain. On what ring but a Stuart's would the "Sic transit" have been equally appropriate ?

Mr. Jones's book touches at many points the religious life of our ancestors. A propos of the ring which marked the novice as the bride of Heaven, he quotes the following remarkable exhorts-

tion by John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, in 1486, "to relygyous systers in the tyme of theyr consecracyon by him" :—

" I aske the banes betwyx the hyghe and moost myghty Prynce, Kyng of all kynges, Sons of Almyghty God, and the Virgyn Mary, in humanyte Cryste Jean of Nazareth, of the One partye, and A. B., of the thother partye, that yf ony [man] or woman can shewe any lawfuli int- pedymente other by any precontracte made or corrupcyon of body or sonic+ of the sayd A. B., that she ought not to be maryed this daye unto the sayd myghty Puma Jean, that they wolde aecordynge unto the laws shewe it."

Let us end with one other quotation, in which the ring plays a more direct part :—

" According to the legend, King Edward was on his way to West- minster when he was met by a beggar, who implored him in the name of St. John—the Apostle peculiarly venerated by the monarch—to grant him assistance. The charitable King had exhausted his ready- money in alms-giving, but drew from his finger a ring, 'large, beauti- ful, and royal,' which he gave to the beggar, who thereupon disap- peared. Shortly afterwards, two English pilgrims in the Holy Land found themselves benighted and in great distress, when suddenly the path before them was lighted up, and an old man, white and hoary, preceded by two tapers, accosted them. Upon [their] telling him to what country they belonged, the old man, 'joyously like to a clerk,' guided them to a hostelry, and announced that he was John the Evangelist, the special patron of King Edward, and gave them a ring to carry back to the monarch, with the warning that in six months' time the King would be with him in Paradise. The pilgrims returned, and found the King at his palace, called from this incident Havering-atte-Bower.' He recognised the ring, and prepared for his end accordingly. On the death of the Confessor, according to custom, he was attired in his royal robes, the crown on his head, a crucifix and gold chain round his neck, and the 'Pilgrim's Ring' on his finger. The body was laid before the high altar at Westminster Abbey (A.D. 1066). On the translation of the remains of Henry IL, the ring of St. John is said to have been with- drawn, and deposited as a relic among the Crown jewels. During the reign of Henry ELL some repairs were made at the Tower, and orders were given for drawing in the chapel of St. John two figures of St. Edward holding out a ring and delivering it to St. John the Evangelist."

Altogether, Finger-Ring Lore is a book that everybody should dip into.