It was customary among the Anglo-Saxons to place rings and other ornaments in the grave: an early Anglo-Saxon poem, recounting the adventures of the chieftain Beowulf and his burial, states ‘they put into the mound rings and bright gems.’
The custom of burying corpses with a ring on the finger continued for ages, as I have remarked in several chapters of this work. Annexed is an illustration, from the ‘Archæologia’ (vol. ii. p. 32, 1773), of a ring with seventy-five table-diamonds, set in gold, found in 1748 in a grave at Carne, seven miles west of Mullinghar, in the county of Westmeath, Ireland.
In the antiquarian researches in the Ionian Isles in 1812 (‘Archæologia,’ vol. xxxiii.) some rings were discovered in tombs at Samo and Ithaca. One of these appears to have been a silver finger-ring, or signet, bearing on the upper part an elliptic piece of glass or crystal, in a state of decomposition, turning on the wire that passes through it.
Squared-work diamond ring found in Ireland.
The other is a gold ring of solid fabric, having for device the figure of a female with a bare head; one arm is enveloped in the folds of her dress, while the other hand is pouring incense on a slender altar. A zigzag garland surrounds the verge of the field. The locality would suggest that it may represent Penelope sacrificing to some tutelar deity, and invoking it to conduct Ulysses home in safety—a conceit which might hold good, even were the work decided to be Roman.
There are some remarkably fine specimens of rings in the Royal Danish Museum, which have been discovered in Scandinavian graves, and some of which are represented in the chapter on ‘Rings from the Earliest Period’ (p. 68).
On the opening of some barrows on the wolds of Yorkshire in 1815, 1816, and 1817, among other disinterments was the skeleton of a female, and some of her ornaments; amongst others, a ring of red amber, in exterior diameter 1⅝ in., in interior diameter half an inch. Also a small ring scarcely one inch in diameter, and a ring of very nearly standard gold, weighing 3 dwts. 21 grs. In front this ring is clasped in a kind of rose, or quatrefoil, and it is an ornament by no means of despicable workmanship. The era of this interment is supposed to be prior to a general extension of Christianity in Britain.
Stukeley (Abury, p. 45) records the finding of a flat gold ring in a barrow at Yatesbury. Douglas, in his discoveries of a later date (‘Nenia Brit.’ p. 117), says ‘rings to the finger seldom occur of any ponderous metal, like the Roman ones of gold, silver, and bronze.’
In the museum at Mayence (the Roman Maguntiacum, or Mogontiacum), so exceedingly rich in antiquarian remains, there are some fine specimens of finger-rings found in Franconian graves. The following illustration represents a gold ring, set with a coin, which is probably the copy of a Roman one:—