_Romance of Rings_
_The Universal Ring_
Of all the jewels of history, most widespread in time and space, and upon
the human body is the ring. From the crown of the head to the tip of the
toes, the circular band has been an adornment and a symbol. In the ears,
around the neck, tight about the biceps, loose about the wrist, across
the chest, around the waist, in iron fetters at the ankle in days of
old to indicate the slave or in the self-imposed “slave anklet” of thin
gold today: men and women have worn rings of grass, of wood, of bone,
of metal. But especially upon the fingers there have been all sorts of
rings, for many purposes.
_The Magic Ring_
One of the earliest values found in rings was doubtless magic. This
worked in many ways, according to the beliefs of different times and
peoples. Simply to put a ring on another person’s finger was to bind that
person to you—an early magical belief which has endured as a symbol in
the engagement and the wedding ring. To protect the wearer against the
powers of evil in the world, rings are adorned with potent gems, or
carved with potent symbols. Turn the emerald in a ring on a poised snake,
and the snake was stricken blind, as the nineteenth-century poet Moore
remembers in _Lalla Rookh_:
Blinded like serpents when they gaze
Upon the emerald’s virgin blaze.
The snake itself, being associated with the sybils and other prophets of
old and linked with man in earliest Bible story and man’s most fateful
hour, is also a most potent and frequent device. It might be carved upon
the ring, or the whole ring itself might represent a serpent, eating its
own tail—like the worm Ouroboros that winds around the world and keeps it
from bursting asunder—or with its head nestling upon its body, watching
for the approach of danger. Being itself a lurking danger, the snake
obviously was most fit to search out hidden evil. A snake ring of gold
with ruby eyes was often on the finger of George IV of England.
_Divining Rings_
Rings of hieroglyphic symbols, the sphinx, or later cabalistic devices,
were used by diviners and seers. Sometimes, to the unwitting eye, the
ring seemed an innocent adornment; when a soothsayer wished to make
use of a magic formula, a cunningly hinged portion opened to reveal
the mystical designs. In the Middle Ages, rings of astrologers and
soothsayers multiplied. Rings with signs of the zodiac were used to cast
a nativity. The powers of numbers were explored and exploited on rings.
The word ABRAXAS, frequent on rings of the time, is said to have drawn
its special power from the number force of the letters, which add up to
365 and thus encompass the entire year. Perhaps that is why Leap Year is
said to be unlucky for men.
A common design, born no doubt of the early sphinx, was the figure
of a fantastic monster compounded of many beasts. Imagination created
many of these hybrid and extremely powerful forms. Associated with the
ABRAXAS was a creature with the head of a cock, the body of a man with
outstretched hands holding a shield and a whip, the legs spread out and
becoming serpents with darting fangs. Especially sought for security
against shipwreck was a ring engraved with a human head adorned with an
elephant’s trunk grasping a trident, symbol of mastery over the sea.
_Renaissance Remedy Rings_
The Renaissance, resplendent with rings, made many to be used as amulets
to bring good fortune, or charms to ward off evil. Cellini made several
such for his noble patrons; they seemed, however, not to stem the tide of
sudden deaths. Against various vindictive powers special gems were once
more utilized, jacinth to bring good fortune to voyagers, sapphires to
keep the eyes keen (as some today employ the humbler carrot), garnet to
soothe the bite of hornet or wasp.
The common people, even more afflicted by the pains of life, also sought
these ringed remedies. The toadstone ring was deemed effective. Several
actual stones have since been called by this name—no one knows precisely
what it was—but the effective ones were generated by the toad, possibly
as nature’s compensation for the creature’s ugliness. The toadstone
was credited, as the Oxford Dictionary puts it, “with alexipharmic or
therapeutic virtues.” The best known allusion to the toadstone is in
Shakespeare’s _As You Like it_, when the banished Duke in the forest
reflects upon his state:
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
It must by no means be thought that the toadstone is merely a literary
fiction. Queen Elizabeth, on her Progress in 1558, was given a “toade
stone set in golde.” Sir Walter Scott, in 1812, called it “sovereign for
protecting new-born children and their mothers from the power of the
fairies.” Against fairies, perhaps the toadstone worked.
More questionable was the power of a ring against specific diseases,
although to the edge of this century country folk in rustic parts, as in
back-lying Suffolk, wore special rings that were blessed against cramps.
A more mechanical method of using rings in witchery or divination has
been to pitch or spin them, or to suspend them and let them swing, in
such a way as to have them indicate Yes or No; or, by falling upon
haphazardly arranged letters, spell out a message.
_Visibility Rings_
Legends of rings that make one invisible are universal. An unusually
potent one, we are told in a tale of medieval Europe, was given by the
Queen Mother to Otnit, King of Lombardy, when he set out to seek the hand
of the Soldan’s daughter. In addition to making him invisible at will,
the ring always foiled his detractors by indicating to the owner the
right road toward his destination.
A ring set with a carbuncle possessed the opposite property, of making
one visible in pitch dark. Thus, in Shakespeare’s _Titus Andronicus_ when
Martius looks into the deep pit and cries that Bassianus is lying there,
his comrades ask how he can see, and he replies:
Upon his bloody finger he doth wear
A precious ring that lightens all the hole,
Which like a taper in some monument
Doth shine upon the dead man’s earthy cheeks
And shows the rugged entrails of the pit.
_Religious Rings_
The early magician or medicine man, when he became the priest, did not
relinquish his ring. As far back as we find traces of worship, we find
religious uses of the ring. Their pious symbolism was perhaps most fully
detailed by Pope Innocent III, when on May 29, 1205 he sent to King John
of England four golden rings each set with a colored stone, and explained
their symbolism in this way: The endless shape of the ring reminds us
of eternity, and that we are all journeyers through time to eternity.
The number of rings equals the four virtues that comprise constancy of
mind: justice, fortitude, prudence, and temperance. The metal signifies
wisdom from on high, which is as gold purified by fire. The four stones
are an emerald, green emblem of faith; a sapphire, blue emblem of hope; a
garnet, red emblem of charity; and a topaz, bright emblem of good works.
The four rings, the four stones, the metal, and the shape, make ten
aspects: ten is the perfect number, being the unity of nature plus the
trinity of God multiplied and fructified by itself.
The religious symbolism of rings has not lapsed. Even today the Pope
wears the traditional _annulus piscatoris_, the Fisherman’s Ring, which
shows St. Peter in a boat, casting a net to haul in the faithful from the
waters of the world. Clerics of various ranks and orders wear special
rings. Nuns wear a ring to signify their symbolic marriage to Jesus.
Less common today, but used throughout Europe for centuries, is the
reliquary ring. This band bears a small cabinet, case, compartment,
or box, usually elaborately carved and bejeweled, within which was a
splinter of the True Cross or the holy relic of a martyred saint.
We shall speak later of the wedding ring, which while a social is also
a religious symbol. Annually on Ascension Day the Doge of Venice sets a
wedding ring onto a finger of the sea, to denote that the Adriatic is
servant to the city just as a wife is to her mate.
_Practical Rings_
From earliest times, too, rings have been enlisted for more prosaic
duties. Signet rings have served romantic ends in history and legend, as
well as supplying the king’s or the merchant’s identifying seal. Noblemen
slain in battle have oftentimes been identified by their rings, which
bore the crests of their noble houses. Until recently every Chinese
scholar and mandarin wore a ring, or carried a little ornamented bar of
ivory or jade, topped with intaglio symbols that stamped his name. Such
stamps are to be seen on many paintings, and at the end of passages of
calligraphy.
The practice of sealing envelopes with stamped wax is no longer a
widespread western custom, and even red tape has lost its redder seal;
hence the signet ring, once most common among men, has been largely
replaced by rings bearing the insignia of a high school or college class
or a fraternal order.
Among other practical uses of finger rings may be mentioned their use as
money by the Gauls and other tribes of northern Europe. Women have had
mirrors set in their rings, to give them constant glimpses of beauty—or
a chance for quick repair. In eighteenth-century England and later—my
grandfather wore one—were rings capped with a little hammer to press the
tobacco down in pipes.
And there were rings for fighting. Roman gladiators added iron rings
to the power of their fists, sometimes even enlarging these with a bar
across the entire back of the hand, held by a leather thong across the
palm—predecessors of the infamous “brass knuckles.”
_Poison Rings_
Even more sinister, though mainly obsolete except in spy stories, is the
murderous poison ring. In some such rings, the poison could be ejected
through a tiny aperture in a point of the design, as in the lion’s claw
of a ring of Cesare Borgia’s. This point would normally be on the side of
the ring at the back of the hand, but it would be slipped around to the
palm outstretched to shake the hand of the unsuspecting victim. A firm
pressure of greeting became at once goodbye.
Another of the Borgias, Pope Alexander VI, would ask the man he destined
to death to open a cabinet for him. He gave the man a key ring, and as
the bar twisted in the massive lock, a prick injected the poison into the
pressing hand.
More frequent than these pressing devices, however, were rings with a
secret compartment or concealed receptacle that could be opened, to pour
out the poison, so that it might be mixed unnoticed when one was filling
a glass of wine for an unwanted guest.
This type of ring was also most useful for emergency suicides. When the
great Carthaginian commander Hannibal was captured by the Romans in 183
B.C., he ended his life by biting into the soft metal cap of his ring
which was filled with poison. In 1794 the French philosopher Condorcet,
arrested in the Revolution, made his exodus from a world in turmoil
through the aid of a poison ring. Numerous accounts of international
espionage in recent wars make it seem that, as a release from torture and
psychological brainwashing, the suicidal use of the poison ring is not
outworn. But many a ring, originally constructed to conceal a poison,
before it found rest in a museum was used as a conveyor of perfume.
A more humdrum use of the ring has been not to end but to mark the
passing hours. The first time-keeping ring was a miniature sundial. As
soon as escapements were compact enough, watches were set as the crowns
of rings; I have mentioned that two hundred years ago Mme. de Pompadour
wore a watch in a gold ring encircled with diamonds.
_Honorary Rings_
A ring has often been used as a mark, token, or reward of distinction
or great service. Originally for valor in battle, these rings are now
used to mark distinction in many fields. In Germany for generations, the
greatest actor has worn the Ifflandring, which he takes from his hand to
bestow upon the performer of the next generation whom he deems his most
worthy successor. Another noted ring is the Mozart Ring, awarded to those
who meritoriously continue the composer’s tradition. There are today but
three wearers of the Mozart Ring: Bruno Walter, Herbert von Karajan, and
Carl Boehm.
_Posies and Lovers’ Rings_
The prettiest rings are those that have been used in courtship. Before
the brilliant solitaire, the large diamond that marks the formal
engagement, all sorts of posy rings, as they were called, were popular
gifts for centuries. An English book of 1624 bears the title “Love’s
Garland, or Posies for rings, handkerchiefs, and gloves, and such pretty
tokens as lovers send their loves.” This was in the main a collection
of little rhyming remarks or pithy sayings, to be engraved on rings,
or on the inside of ring bands when the ring itself was decorated with
stones in the form of flowers or lovers’ knots. A favorite was the Latin
motto _Amor vincit omnia_, (Love conquers all), which Chaucer in _The
Canterbury Tales_ put on a bracelet of the Prioress. But simple English
phrases abounded on these rings. “I am yours” is blunt enough to serve.
“My love is true To none but you” might make a suspicious maiden (but
what shy maid in love would question so?) wonder to how many the donor
had already shown love that was false. More to be trusted, perhaps, is
the pious soul that sent the motto: “In God and thee My joy shall be.” A
wit (or a gambler) might complacently have inscribed “I cannot show The
love I O.” A less wary but more learned fellow might proclaim, inside the
ring: “Let reason rule affection.” The practice of having rings engraved
with such posies was so common that in Shakespeare’s _As You Like It_ the
melancholy Jacques taunts Orlando:
“You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted
with goldsmiths’ wives, and conned them out of rings?”
I quote Shakespeare not because he is the most given to such references,
but because he is the best known of the many writers in whose works they
abound: jewels in jeweled phrases.
In other forms than posies, rings carry the language of love. They may,
of course, in engraved letters or letters shaped of stones, give the
initials or the name of the beloved. Or letters may record a significant
event in the course of the courtship, as when a cryptically boastful
Frenchman set a ring with the letters LACD, which pronounced in French
sound “Elle a cédé”—“She has yielded!”
More subtly and more sentimentally such announcements may be made,
moments recorded, or feelings expressed, through the initial letters of
the gems. Thus a beloved named Adele might be given a ring with stones
set in the following order: amethyst, diamond, emerald, lapis lazuli,
emerald; the first letters of the names of the stones spell her name.
A favorite such token is one arranged so that the initial letters of
the stones spell “Regard Love”; hence, these have sometimes been called
regard rings. Rings have been used to express sentiment less soft, as
well; politically minded Irish, in Revolution times, were wearing rings
that spelled Repeal.
For those with the enthusiasm and the funds, almost an entire alphabet
of gem stones can be used. Omitting duplicates, one may run along, to
spell one’s message, with amber, bloodstone, carnelian, diamond, emerald,
fluorite, garnet, hyacinth, indicolite, jasper, kunzite, lapis lazuli,
moonstone, nephrite, opal, pearl, quartz, ruby, sapphire, turquoise,
variscite, willemite, zircon. This fashion of conveying one’s sentiments
has never grown obsolete and is continually renewed.
_The Nuptial Ring_
When courtship reaches the more definite stage of betrothal, rings are
still the order of the day. As early as the second century B. C. the
Romans, whose marriages were not love matches but family affairs, gave
formal engagement rings. A study of Shakespeare reveals forty-five
references to rings and jewels, eleven being of Queen Elizabeth’s
favorite, the pearl. For example, betrothal rings are exchanged by
Troilus and Cressida; and such an exchange builds the sunrise comedy
scene at the close of _The Merchant of Venice_. For friends, the _fede_
(faithful) ring developed, a band of gold representing clasped hands. For
lovers, the gimmal or gemmal, the twin ring, was popular; this consisted
of two rings intimately intertwined, which ingeniously came apart so that
each lover could wear half of the pair.
Climax of the deft pursuit and fond allure, the wedding ring has always
been a treasured symbol. An early ecclesiastic told why: “The form of the
ring being circular, that is, round and without end, importeth thus, that
mutual love and heartfelt affection shall roundly flow from one to the
other, as in a circle, continuously and forever.”
Although the wedding ring for a long time was invariably of gold,
fashions in recent years have been changing. Our grandmothers were
proud to wear a plain wide band. After the First World War, when gold
gravitated toward Fort Knox, the bands grew narrower and platinum wedding
rings were introduced. The gold itself, instead of a plain band, might be
drawn as though the ring were fashioned of strands, or hammered into tiny
bars with corners around the circle, in various modernistic patterns. The
practice also began of using diamonds in wedding rings; never one large
brilliant, outthrust like the happy engagement solitaire, but a row of
smaller stones inset, almost flush with the band. Today the plain wide
wedding band is circling back into favor, along with the olden practice
of putting a ring on the finger not only of the bride but of the groom.
It is a mutual compact.
In ancient times, much more elaborate rings were used for the ceremony,
sometimes so large that immediately after the wedding they were put
aside, replaced by smaller rings, and put on again only at the burial
day. Among the Jews the ring might have an adornment in the shape of a
tower, and be inscribed with the Hebrew words for Good luck, Mazul-tov.
_Less Solemn Marriage Rings_
Among the country folk in late medieval times, marriage was sometimes
a quickly arranged affair, and rush rings were often used for rushed
marriages. The rush ring weddings, at which a “hedge-priest” officiated,
were intended neither to be legal nor to endure. Some more coarsely
cynical ceremonies were actually held with the assistance of the town
butcher, with the bride and groom standing on opposite sides of a side of
beef, being joined together with the traditional words, “till death do us
part.”
Among more playful frolics was the practice of the bachelors among the
Renaissance Italians, and the Italianate Englishmen, of wearing an
engagement ring on the hat or in the ear, so as to invite and incite the
maidens. In England, the rings were more often confined to the hand, and
a language of the fingers developed. A ring on the first (little) finger
indicated that the man was seeking a wife; on the second (which we now
call the third finger) that he had found her; on the third, that the
knot had been tied; and on the fourth, that he had every intention of
remaining a bachelor. Similarly, for the woman: first finger, not keeping
company; second finger, engaged; third, married; and fourth, intending to
die a maid.
It will be noted that in this system the wedding ring did not appear on
what is now the usual finger. And indeed it was only gradually that what
we now call the third finger of the left hand became the permanent choice
for the bond of matrimony. Those who must have reasons have found three
for this choice.
The first reason is physiological. It developed when various theories
of the blood circulated freely, before the blood itself was known to
circulate. The Romans spoke of the _vena amoris_, the vein of love, but
the idea was earlier expressed by the Greeks, who credited it to the
Egyptians. This vein of love, they declared, connected the third finger
of the left hand directly with the heart, which is the seat, as everyone
knows, of the tender passion.
The second reason is the product of logical elimination. The analysis
was made by Macrobius, a Roman commentator of the late fourth century.
The thumb, Macrobius declared, is too busy to be set apart for special
dedication. Because of the shape of the hand, the forefinger and the
little finger are only half protected. The middle finger (being in his
time used by mothers as a practical suppository and by doctors for anal
exploration) was too opprobrious. This left only what he called the
_pronubus_, the one “for the nuptial,” which has ever since been called
the ring finger. On the left hand, to indicate the woman’s subjection, it
is the engagement finger.
The third explanation grows out of old church practice. The bride was
blessed “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.”
Starting with the thumb, if the bridegroom touched one finger with each
name, he would complete the trinity with the middle finger, then put the
ring on the next one. That finger is the husband’s to whom the woman owes
allegiance next to God.
For a long time, it should be mentioned, the wedding ring was worn on the
right hand; sometimes on the little finger, as the least obtrusive; while
in many eastern lands it has been worn upon the thumb.
_Counting Fingers_
In his _Treatise of Spousals_ written in 1680, Henry Swinburne declared
that the wedding ring “is to be worn on the fourth finger of the left
hand, next unto the little finger.” Since his time there has been
confusion in the counting.
If we name the fingers, the matter is simple enough: holding the arms
outstretched, palms down, and starting from the inside, we have the
thumb, the index finger (or pointer or forefinger), the middle finger,
the ring finger, and the little finger (or, to use the word borrowed from
children, the pinkie).
Numbers complicated the picture. Swinburne counted the thumb as the first
finger. The Elizabethans a century before him, as we noted in their
practice of indicating their attitude toward matrimony, counted the
little finger as the first. The common system of counting today starts
not with the thumb, but next to it. Thus the index finger is the first;
and the engagement and the wedding ring adorn the third finger of the
left hand. Perhaps it is wiser to speak of the fingers by their names.
The important thing is that they be fitly adorned.
_Memorial Rings_
Lighthearted ceremonies were no more than flyspecks on a pattern of
permanent matrimony, with no frills of separation or easy divorce.
Marriages were “made in heaven”; their earthly aspect ended only at the
grave. A married couple had a long time to be fond of or at least to grow
used to one another. Death made a great gap in the pattern of family
life, so that it came to be marked by a memorial ring. The more pious,
indeed, did not await the fearful summons to wear its grim reminder;
many wore mortuary rings that, like the skeleton at the feast, kept
their final fate solemnly in the minds of the living. These might be
shaped with a death’s head, or open to reveal a skeleton or a crucifix.
Or they might present a somber motto: “Breathe pain, death gain,” or the
forthright counsel, “Live to die.” The favorite stone for such rings, of
course, was jet.
Many a will provided money for the purchase of memorial rings by family
or friends, thus hoping to keep the dead one alive in thoughts. “Bind me
to your hearts with bands of gold.” When Anne of Cleves, divorced wife
of Henry VIII, died in 1557, she left money for memorial rings. In 1616
William Shakespeare left twenty-six shillings sixpence apiece to Hamnet
Sadler, William Reynolds and “to my fellows,” the actors John Hemynge,
Richard Burbage, and Henry Cundell, to buy them rings in his memory. He
left no other jewels, no books, and his second-best bed to his wife.
While the 250 odd rings of England’s last King Henry were probably seldom
equalled for one person, a more modest but more representative listing
was given, in 1649, of the rings of a country lady. She possessed, among
other jewels, a toadstone ring, two Turkies (turquoises), six thumb
rings, three alderman’s seals, five gemmels and four death’s heads.
Always, in every period and every guise, the realm of jewelry has been
marked by the reign of the ring.