In Berkshire, England, there is a popular superstition that a ring made from a piece of silver collected at the Communion is a cure for convulsions and fits of every kind.[222] Another curious British superstition, by way of charm, is recorded: that a silver ring will cure fits if it be made of five sixpences, collected from five different bachelors, to be conveyed by the hand of a bachelor to a smith that is a bachelor. None of the persons who give the sixpences are to know for what purpose or to whom they gave them. While, in Devonshire, there is a notion that the king’s evil can be cured by wearing a ring made of three nails or screws which have been used to fasten a coffin that has been dug out of the churchyard.
There is a medical charm in Ireland to cure warts. A wedding-ring is procured and the wart touched or pricked with a gooseberry thorn through the ring.[223]
A wedding-ring rubbed upon that little abscess called a sty, which is frequently seen on the tarsi of the eyes, is said to remove it.[224] In Somersetshire, England, there is a superstition that the ring-finger, stroked along any sore or wound, will soon heal it. All the other fingers are said to be poisonous, especially the forefinger.[225] In Suffolk, England, nine young men of a parish subscribed a crooked sixpence each to be moulded into a ring for a young woman afflicted with fits. The clergy in that country are not unfrequently asked for sacramental silver to make rings of, to cure falling sickness; and it is thought cruel to refuse.[226] There is a singular custom prevailing in some parts of Northamptonshire and probably there are other places where a similar practice exists. If a female is afflicted with fits, nine pieces of silver money and nine three-halfpennies are collected from nine bachelors. The silver money is converted into a ring to be worn by the afflicted person and the three-halfpennies (i. e. 13½d.) are paid to the maker of the ring, an inadequate remuneration for his labor but which he good-naturedly accepts. If the afflicted person be a male, the contributions are levied upon females.[227] In Norfolk a ring was made from nine sixpences freely given by persons of the opposite sex and it was considered a charm against epilepsy. “I have seen,” says a correspondent in Notes and Queries,[228] “nine sixpences brought to a silversmith, with a request that he would make them into a ring; but 13½d. was not tendered to him for making nor do I think that any three-halfpennies are collected for payment. After the patient had left the shop, the silversmith informed me that such requests were of frequent occurrence and that he supplied the patients with thick silver rings, but never took the trouble to manufacture them from the sixpences.”
Brande, in his Popular Antiquities,[229] says: “A boy, diseased, was recommended by some village crone to have recourse to an alleged remedy, which has actually, in the enlightened days of the nineteenth century, been put in force. He was to obtain thirty pennies from thirty different persons, without telling them why or wherefore the sum was asked; after receiving them, to get them exchanged for a half-crown of sacrament money, which was to be fashioned into a ring and worn by the patient. The pennies were obtained, but the half-crown was wanting—the rector of the place, very properly, declined taking any part in such a gross superstition. However, another reverend gentleman was more pliable; and a ring was formed (or professed to be so) from the half-crown and worn by the boy.” A similar instance, which occurred about fourteen years since, has been furnished to the same work by Mr. R. Bond of Gloucester: “The epilepsy had enervated the mental faculties of an individual moving in a respectable sphere in such a degree as to partially incapacitate him from directing his own affairs; and numerous were the recipes, the gratuitous offering of friends, that were ineffectually resorted to by him. At length, however, he was told of what would certainly be an infallible cure, for in no instance had it failed; it was, to personally collect thirty pence, from as many respectable matrons, and to deliver them into the hands of a silversmith, who, in consideration thereof, would supply him with a ring, wrought out of half a crown, which he was to wear on one of his fingers—and the complaint would immediately forsake him. This advice he followed; and for three or four years the ring ornamented (if we may so express it) his fifth or little finger, notwithstanding the frequent relapses he experienced during that time were sufficient to convince a less ardent mind than his that the fits were proof against its influence. Finally, whilst suffering from a last visitation of that distressing malady, he expired, though wearing the ring—thus exemplifying a striking memento of the absurdity of the means he had had recourse to.”[230]
Quite recently, a new means has been contrived for deluding the public in the form of rings, which are to be worn upon the fingers and are said to prevent the occurrence of and cure various diseases. They are called galvanic rings. Although by the contact of the two metals of which they are composed an infinitesimally minute current of electricity (hence, also, of magnetism) is generated, still, from the absurd manner in which the pieces of metal composing the ring are arranged and which displays the most profound ignorance of the laws of electricity and magnetism, no trace of the minute current traverses the finger upon which the ring is worn; so that a wooden ring or none at all would have exactly the same effect as regards the magnetism or galvanism.[231]
Epilepsy was to be cured by wearing a ring in which a portion of an elk’s horn was to be inclosed; while the hoof of an ass, worn in the same way, had the reputation of preventing conjugal debility.[232]
Michaelis, a physician at Leipsic, had a ring made of the tooth of a sea-horse, by which he pretended to cure diseases of every kind.[233] Rings of lead, mixed with quicksilver, were used against headache; and even the chains of criminals and iron used in the construction of gibbets were applied to the removal of complaints.
Rings simply made of gold were supposed to cure St. Anthony’s fire; but, if inscribed with magic words, their power was irresistible.