About 1830, when popular feeling was roused to the highest pitch by the agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws, many rings were set with the following stones, the initial letters forming the word “repeal”:
- Ruby
- Emerald
- Pearl
- Emerald
- Amethyst
- Lapis lazuli
An Irishman, who owned such a ring, noted one day that the lapis lazuli had fallen out, and took the ring to a jeweller in Cork, to have the missing stone replaced. When the work was completed, the owner, seeing that the jeweller had set a topaz in place of a lapis lazuli, protested against the substitution; but the jeweller induced him to accept the ring as it was, by the witty explanation that it now read “repeat,” and that if the agitation were often enough repeated, the repeal would come of itself.[88]
Crossed hands of the figure of a woman upon a mummy case in the British Museum
Fairholt’s “Rambles of an Artist”
Hands from portrait of a woman. School of Cranach
British Museum
