The history and poetry of finger-rings

by Charles Edwards

[194] Popular Delusions, ii. 298, 301; Harwood.

[195] Brande, iii. 329.

[196] P. 295.

[197] Ennemoser’s History of Magic, ii. 456, referring to the 29th book of Ammianus Marcellinus.

[198] Archæologia, xxi. 124.

[199] Solomon’s wisdom and happiness have become proverbial; and the fable of the rabbins and the heroic and erotic poems of the Persians and Arabians speak of him, as the romantic traditions of the Normans and Britons do of King Arthur, as a fabulous monarch, whose natural science, (mentioned even in the Bible,) whose wise sayings and dark riddles, whose power and magnificence are attributed to magic. According to these fictions Solomon’s ring was the talisman of his wisdom and power.—Ency. Amer., Art. Solomon.

[200] Johnston’s Josephus, Book viii. ch. 2.

[201] Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, vol. ii. p. 164, (Ticknor’s edit.) In Chambers’s Collection of Scotch Ballads, this story goes under the name of Lammilsin.

[202] Vol. ix. p. 233.

[203] Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, vol. i. p. 187.