Rings in the Royal Irish Academy.
The other is a five-sided bar of gold, flat on the inside near the finger, and angular externally; weight 1 oz. 12 dwts. 6 grs. This might be denominated a torque ring.
The following illustration represents a spiral silver ring, found at Largo, weighing 120 grs. It is shaped, apparently, by the hammer. The edges are serrated. A spiral ring found with Saxon remains in Kent, engraved by Douglas in his ‘Nenia,’ and another found in the Isle of Wight, represented in the ‘Winchester’ volume of the Archæological Association, may be compared with the present example.
Spiral silver ring.
Dr. Mantell has a massive gold ring, supposed to have been worn on the finger, formed of two square bars rudely twisted together, and gradually diminishing in size towards the extremities, where they are united together. It was ploughed up at Bormer, in Sussex, and was presented to Dr. Mantell by the Earl of Chichester. It is represented in Horsfield’s ‘History of Lewes,’ plate iv. Similar rings of this description, but differing in the fashion of the twist, have been noticed as found in Britain. The resemblance between these ornaments and the gold ‘ring-money’ of the interior of Africa is exceedingly curious.
Ring: Flodden Field.
The annexed engraving (from the ‘Archæological Journal,’ vol. iii. p. 269) represents a gold ring, belonging to Sir Noel Paton, F.S.A., Scotland, reported to have been found on the field of Flodden: weight 8 dwts. 17 grs. Other rings of a similar form have been discovered, and ‘they appear to offer some analogy with the torc of the Celtic age.’
The annexed illustration represents a remarkably fine ring engraved in Chifflet’s ‘Anastasis Childerici’ (1655), on the same page as that of the Childeric ring (described in the chapter on ‘Memorial and Mortuary Rings’), for purposes of comparison, in carrying out his original theory, that the supposed bees of Childeric were, by gradual transition, converted into the figure known as the fleur de lys of a later monarchy, as he endeavours to illustrate by numerous diagrams, but he omits to say where this ring marked ‘sapphirus’ was originally found. It is a mere supposition that the figure represents St. Louis, but in Montfaucon’s ‘Monuments de la Monarchie Française’ (Paris, 1729), in a long disquisition on the origin, &c., of the fleur de lys, on referring to plate xxiii. tom. ii. p. 158, where St. Louis ‘instruit ses enfans,’ his shield is noticed as bearing for the first time three fleurs de lys.