Some of the commentators have the following note upon this passage: “A gimmal is a piece of jointed work, where one piece moves within another; whence it is taken at large for an engine. It is now vulgarly called ‘gimcrack.’”
Mr. Archdeacon Nares instances a stage direction in “Lingua,” an old play—“Enter Anamnestes (a page to Memory) in a grave sattin sute, purple buskins, &c. a gimmal ring with one link hanging.” He adds, that gimmal rings, though originally double, were by a further refinement made triple, or even more complicated; yet the name remained unchanged. Herrick, in his “Hesperides,” has the following verses.
The Jimmal Ring, or True-love-knot.
Thou sent’st to me a true-love-knot; but I
Return’d a ring of jimmals, to imply
Thy love had one knot, mine a triple-tye.
According to Randle Holme, who, under the term “annulet,” figures the gimmal ring,[242] Morgan, in his “Sphere of Gentry,” speaks of “three triple gimbal rings borne by the name of Hawberke:” which Mr. Nares says was “evidently because the hawberk was formed of rings linked into each other.”
A further illustration of the gimmal ring may be gathered from the following passage. “It is related in Davis’s Rites of the Cathedral of Durham, (8vo. 1672, p. 51,) that over our lady of Bolton’s altar there was a marvellous, lively, and beautiful image of the picture of our lady, called the lady of Bolton, which picture was made to open with gimmes (or linked fastenings) from the breast downward; and within the said image was wrought and pictured the image of our Saviour marvellously finely gilt.”[243]
I find that the brass rings within which the seaman’s compass swings, are by the seamen called gimbals. This is the only instance I can discover of the term being still used.
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