The French newspapers of May 1873 announced that at one of the principal restaurants in Paris, a valuable diamond ring was found in the stomach of a salmon purchased at the central markets.
In the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ (January 1765), is the account of a Mrs. Todd, of Deptford, who, in going in a boat to Whitstable, endeavoured to prove that no person need be poor who was willing to be otherwise; and being excited with her argument, took off her gold ring, and, throwing it out into the sea, said ‘it was as much impossible for any person to be poor who had an inclination to be otherwise, as for her ever to see that ring again.’ The second day after this, and when she had landed, she bought some mackerel, which the servant commenced to dress for dinner, whereupon there was found a gold ring in one. The servant ran to show it to her mistress, and the ring proved to be that which she had thrown away.
Brand, in his ‘History of Newcastle,’ relates that a gentleman of that city, in the middle of the seventeenth century, dropped a ring from his hand over the bridge into the River Tyne. Years passed on, when one day his wife bought a fish in the market, and the ring was discovered in its stomach.
A correspondent to ‘Notes and Queries’ (vol. i. series 3, p. 36), relates the following curious anecdote: ‘A gentleman, who was in the habit of frequenting a favourite spot for the sake of a view that interested him, used to lounge on a rail, and one day in a fit of absence of mind got fumbling about the post in which one end of the rail was inserted. On his way home he missed a valuable ring; he went back again and looked diligently for it but without success. A considerable time afterwards in visiting his old haunt, and indulging in his usual fit of absence, he was very agreeably surprised to find the ring on his finger again, and which appears to have been occasioned by (in both instances), his pressing his finger in the aperture of the post, which just fitted sufficiently with a pressure to hold the ring. I afterwards tried the experiment at the spot, and found it perfectly easy to have been effected with an easily fitting ring.’
A curious antique ring, discovered in 1867 near the site of the Priory of St. Mary, Pilton, near Barnstaple, was exhibited by Mr. Chanter, the owner, at the Exeter Meeting of the Royal Archæological Institute (July 1873). The ring is of pure gold, weighing 131 grains, a large egg-shaped sapphire being in the middle, in a solid oval setting. The stone had a hole drilled through the lower edge, through which a gold stud was passed, but it did not extend through the gold setting. The stone had been evidently flawed by the operation. The ring was intended for the thumb, and for ecclesiastical use, dating from about 1100 or 1200. A singularity is attached to the discovery. Some men were engaged in hedging, when they had to cut down some old trees. After cutting down one, they found the ‘moot’ of another underneath, and right in the centre of the latter was a round ball eight or ten inches in diameter, which the men took at first to be a cannon-ball. On opening the clay, however, the ring, bright and perfect, was exposed in the centre. A theory to account for this remarkable discovery is that the ring might have been stolen and buried by the thief for concealment under the tree in a ball of clay. For some reason or other the ring was left there, and in the course of time another tree grew over the old one.
Among the singular discoveries of rings, I may mention the following:—In 1697 a woman was drowned for theft, in the Loch of Spynie, in Morayshire, and in 1811 the skeleton was brought to light, with a ring on its finger. In 1862, during some discoveries made at Pompeii, a body was too far decayed to be touched, but liquid plaster of Paris was poured upon it, and a cast was taken, so accurately done that a ring was found on the finger. In the excavation of an Anglo-Saxon burial-place at Harnham Hill, near Salisbury, a silver twisted ring was found on the middle finger-bone of a skeleton. In some sepulchral objects from Italy, Styria, and Mecklenburg, obtained by the late J. M. Kemble, Esq., was a finger-ring of bronze, in which the bone still lay. The Abbé Cochet, the indefatigable Norman explorer, mentions this as of usual occurrence. ‘Au doigt de la main sont les bagues, ou des anneaux d’or, d’argent, de cuivre, ou de bronze. Quelques unes de ces bagues sont unies; mais d’autres ont des chatons en agate, en verroterie rouge ou vert, ou des croix encaustées sur métal. Communement, elles sont encore passées au doigt que les porta, dont la phalange est tout verdie par l’oxyde du bronze’ (‘La Normandie Souterraine,’ p. 29).
In Moore’s ‘Life of Byron’ we have an instance of a lost ring recovered under peculiarly interesting circumstances: ‘On the day of the arrival of the lady’s (Miss Millbanke) answer, he (Lord Byron) was sitting down to dinner, when his gardener came in, and presented him with his mother’s wedding-ring, which she had lost many years before, and which the gardener had just found in digging up the mould under her window. Almost at the same moment, the letter from Miss Millbanke arrived, and Lord Byron exclaimed, “If it contains a consent, I will be married with this very ring.” It did contain a very flattering acceptance of his proposal (of marriage), and a duplicate of the letter had been sent to London, in case this should have missed him.’
Among the numerous applications of rings to various purposes, one of the most curious is the custom, once prevalent in the Isle of Man, that if a man grossly insulted a married woman he was to suffer death, but if the woman was unmarried the Deemster, or judge, gave her a rope, a sword, and a ring, and she had it put to her choice either to hang him with the rope, or to cut off his head with the sword, or to marry him with the ring.
In one of Robin Hood’s ballads we find that a ring was part of a prize for archery:—