Curious Facts

Everything below is in the book — each fact links straight to the page it comes from.

Two rival magicians once duelled with rings — a serpent against a toad. A medieval tale has a necromancer introduce himself to a fellow professor of magic by displaying a serpent-ring; the second man, not wanting competition, "produced his toadstone ring, observing that the toad might swallow the serpent, thereby intimating his power to overcome him." Albertus Magnus held that the finest toadstones bore the figure of the reptile engraved on them. Read it in the book →
Narwhal tusk passed for unicorn horn, and was hung on a gold chain for dipping into dinner. The horn was believed to detect and neutralise poison, becoming "agitated when placed in contact with a poisoned body." A fragment was fixed to a chain of gold "in order that it might be plunged into a dish without putting in the fingers." Read it in the book →
Victorian jewellers' hottest "novelty" was a design thousands of years old. Fairholt notes that the coiled-serpent ring is "equally ancient, equally far-spread in the old world, and which has had a very large sale among ourselves as a decided novelty. In fact, it has been the most successful design our ring-makers have produced of late years." Read it in the book →
Planetary rings had to marry the right stone to the right metal. Each planet's gem was set only in its own metal: "the Sun, diamond or sapphire in a ring of gold; the Moon, crystal in silver; Mercury, magnet, in quicksilver; Venus, amethyst in copper; Mars, emerald in iron; Jupiter, cornelian in tin; Saturn, turquoise in lead." Read it in the book →
Ancient Athens sold mass-produced charm rings for a single drachma. Amulet rings of wood, bone "or some other cheap materials, were manufactured in large numbers at Athens, and could be purchased, gifted with any charm required, for the small consideration of a single drachma." Read it in the book →
Oriental thumb-rings were archery equipment, not ornament. Large cornelian and agate signets exist "of large size, being designed to be worn on the thumb of the right hand, in order to be used in drawing the bow-string, which the Orientals pull with the bent thumb, catching it against the shank of the ring." Read it in the book →
The best guard against the evil eye was a ring bearing a creature hatched from a cock's egg. The cockatrice was "supposed to proceed from a cock's egg under various planetary and talismanic influences," and its image alone averted the glance — though it worked both ways, as Dryden had it: "If they see first, they kill; if seen, they die." Read it in the book →
An early Church father issued an approved list of ring devices — no swords, no wine cups. Clemens Alexandrinus told second-century Christians to engrave "either a pigeon, or a fish, or a ship running before the wind, or a musical lyre," but never idols, "nor a sword, nor a bow, being the followers of peace, nor drinking goblets, being sober men." Read it in the book →
A sexton dug up a signet engraved with a sleeping dormouse and the words "Wake me no man". The ring was found while digging a grave at Ripon: "an ancient signet-ring, on which was engraved a dormouse coiled up in sleep, with an inscription around it, in black-letter characters, 'Wake me no man.'" A similar ring is said to have surfaced in a churchyard near Scarborough. Read it in the book →
Selling fake rings could get you whipped in Cheapside. Henry Machyn's diary records for 1556: "The iij day of July was a man wypyd a-bowtt the post of reformacyon bef the standard in Chepsyd for sellyng of false rynges." The Goldsmiths' Company preferred fines, and in 1512 confiscated two and a half dozen substandard rings as pledges. Read it in the book →
Sharply pointed diamond rings were prized as glass-cutters for writing on windows. The pyramidal stone in a Venetian ring was of the kind "then coveted for writing on glass." With such a ring, Fairholt says, Raleigh scratched on a window-pane: "Fain would I rise, but that I fear to fall." Read it in the book →
Egyptians already called the third finger the ring-finger — but not for weddings. A mummy-case in the British Museum shows a woman's hands crowded with rings, the left the more loaded. Wilkinson notes that its third finger was decorated with more rings than any other and was the ring-finger "par excellence," "though there is no evidence of its having been so honoured at the marriage ceremony." Read it in the book →
Persians would not make gold rings, because they could not pray in them. Tavernier reports "the Persians did not make gold rings, their religion forbidding the wearing of any article of that metal during prayers," since removing them at every devotion would be too troublesome. Gems he sold to the King in gold settings were promptly reset in silver. Read it in the book →
Galway's Claddagh fishermen passed one wedding ring down the generations. In this exclusive community of some five or six thousand, "the wedding-ring is an heirloom in the family; it is regularly transferred from the mother to the daughter who is first married, and so passes to her descendants." Many of the gemmel rings still worn there were very old. Read it in the book →
A Mogul nobleman offered a measure of pearls for the same measure of grain — and starved. Forbes's *India* records that Cambaya's finest mausoleum honours a man who, during a famine that almost depopulated the region, "offered a measure of pearls for an equal quantity of grain; but not being able to procure food at any price, he died of hunger, and this history is related on his monument." Read it in the book →
Not every posy ring was romantic. Among the mottoes collected from 1658's *Mysteries of Love and Eloquence* is one of brutal candour: "Thou wert not handsom, wise, but rich; 'Twas that which did my eyes bewitch." Others were more hopeful — "This circle, though but small about, The devil, jealousy, shall keep out." Read it in the book →
Roman matrons threw their jewels — and their sons' rings — onto Caesar's funeral pyre. Rings were burnt with the corpse, which King says "fully accounts for the number of fine intagli partly or wholly calcined which every collector meets with," often to his great regret. At Caesar's burial "the matrons burned on his funeral pyre their personal ornaments," together with robes and the rings of their sons. Read it in the book →
Arabian princesses wore bells on their rings so that homage could be paid in passing. Calmet states they "wore golden rings on their fingers, to which little bells were suspended, as well as in the flowing tresses of their hair, that their superior rank might be known." An Indian ring described here has silver drops that "jingle with a soft, low note as the hand moves." Read it in the book →
Walter Scott wore a lock of Charles I's hair, set in gold melted from Indian coins. Sir Henry Halford gave Scott hair taken when the king's remains were found at Windsor in 1813, and Sir John Malcolm supplied "Indian coins to supply virgin gold for the setting of this relic"; the finished ring was inscribed "Remember." Another ring, said to have been handed to Bishop Juxon by Charles I on the scaffold, carries a death's-head and the legend "BEHOLD. THE. ENDE." Read it in the book →
An Ethiopian king's amethyst ring was worn as an antidote to drunkenness. Heliodorus describes a royal jewel with a shank of electrum and a bezel "flaming with an Ethiopian amethyst," engraved with a young shepherd and his flock — "an antidote to the wearer against intoxication." Read it in the book →
Aristophanes joked that no charmed ring could protect you from a lawyer. In the *Plutus*, a just man threatened by a sycophant replies that he is proof against evil influences, "having a charmed ring." The servant Carion observes "that the ring would not prevail against the bite of a sycophant." Read it in the book →