Among the singular _discoveries_ of rings, I may mention the following:--In 1697 a woman was drowned for theft, in the Loch of Spynie, in Morayshire, and in 1811 the skeleton was brought to light, with a ring on its finger. In 1862, during some discoveries made at Pompeii, a body was too far decayed to be touched, but liquid plaster of Paris was poured upon it, and a cast was taken, so accurately done that a ring was found on the finger. In the excavation of an Anglo-Saxon burial-place at Harnham Hill, near Salisbury, a silver twisted ring was found on the middle finger-bone of a skeleton. In some sepulchral objects from Italy, Styria, and Mecklenburg, obtained by the late J. M. Kemble, Esq., was a finger-ring of bronze, in which the bone still lay. The Abbé Cochet, the indefatigable Norman explorer, mentions this as of usual occurrence. ‘Au doigt de la main sont les bagues, ou des anneaux d’or, d’argent, de cuivre, ou de bronze. Quelques unes de ces bagues sont unies; mais d’autres ont des chatons en agate, en verroterie rouge ou vert, ou des croix encaustées sur métal. Communement, elles sont encore passées au doigt que les porta, dont la phalange est tout verdie par l’oxyde du bronze’ (‘La Normandie Souterraine,’ p. 29). In Moore’s ‘Life of Byron’ we have an instance of a lost ring recovered under peculiarly interesting circumstances: ‘On the day of the arrival of the lady’s (Miss Millbanke) answer, he (Lord Byron) was sitting down to dinner, when his gardener came in, and presented him with his mother’s wedding-ring, which she had lost many years before, and which the gardener had just found in digging up the mould under her window. Almost at the same moment, the letter from Miss Millbanke arrived, and Lord Byron exclaimed, “If it contains a consent, I will be married with this very ring.” It _did_ contain a very flattering acceptance of his proposal (of marriage), and a duplicate of the letter had been sent to London, in case this should have missed him.’ * * * * * Among the numerous applications of rings to various purposes, one of the most curious is the custom, once prevalent in the Isle of Man, that if a man grossly insulted a married woman he was to suffer death, but if the woman was unmarried the Deemster, or judge, gave her a rope, a sword, and a ring, and she had it put to her choice either to hang him with the rope, or to cut off his head with the sword, or to marry him with the ring. In one of Robin Hood’s ballads we find that a ring was part of a prize for archery:-- A greate courser, with saddle and brydle, With gold burnished full bright; A paire of gloves, a red golde ring, A pipe of wyne, good fay. What man berest him best, I wist, The prize shall bear away. Rings were proffered as bribes: in the old legend of King Estmere, the porter of King Adlan’s hall is bribed by that monarch and his brother, disguised as harpers, to admit them:--