Finger-Ring Lore

Everything a Victorian antiquary could gather about rings: betrothal and mourning, poison rings and papal rings, the superstitions attached to every stone, and the rings dug from the presumed site of Troy.

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Rings in Ecclesiastical Usages: Elizabeth

Mrs. Jameson, in her 'Sacred and Legendary Art,' 1 The reader will be reminded of the anecdote of Queen Elizabeth, who, drawing from her finger the coronation ring, showed it to the Commons, and told them that when she received that ring she had solemnly bound herself in marriage to the realm, and it would be quite sufficient for the memorial of her name, and for her glory, if, when she died, an inscription were engraved on her marble tomb : 'Here lyeth Elizabeth, which (sic) reigned a virgin, and died a woman.' This coronation ring was filed off her finger shortly before her death, on account of the flesh having grown over it. mentions an engraving of the marriage of St. Catherine by one of the earliest artists of the genuine German school, the anonymous engraver known only as 'Le Graveur de 1466,' 'the scene is Paradise; and the Virgin-Mother, seated on a flowery throne, is in the act of twining a wreath, for which St. Dorothea presents the roses; in front of the Virgin kneels St. Catherine, and beside her stands the Infant Christ (here a child about five or six years old), and presents the ring,' &c.

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