A popular ballad of old, called the ‘Cruel Knight, or the Fortunate Farmer’s Daughter,’ represents a knight passing a cot, and hearing that the woman within is in childbirth. His knowledge in the occult sciences informs him that the child to be born is destined to become his wife. He endeavours to evade the decrees of fate, and, to avoid so ignoble an alliance, by various attempts to destroy the child, but which are defeated. At length, when grown to woman’s estate, he takes her to the sea-side, intending to drown her but relents; at the same time, throwing a ring into the sea, he commands her never to see his face again, on pain of death, unless she can produce the ring. She afterwards becomes a cook in a gentleman’s family, and finds the ring in a cod-fish as she is dressing it for dinner. The marriage takes place, of course. The monument to Lady Berry in Stepney Church bears:--paly of six on a bend, three mullets (Elton) impaling a fish, and in the dexter chief point an annulet between two bends wavy. This coat of arms, which exactly corresponds with that borne by Ventris, of Cambridgeshire, has given rise to the tradition that Lady Berry was the heroine of the above story. The ballad lays the scene of the events in Yorkshire, but incidents of the ring and the fish are, as I observed, numerous.[24] The various arts employed by the ancients in ‘divination’ were many. The annexed illustrations, representing divination rings, are taken from Liceti, ‘Antiqua Schemata’ (_Gemmarium Annularium_); the two figures on one ring are trying eagerly to discover future events in a crystal globe. Crystallomancy included every variety of divination by means of transparent bodies. These, polished and enchanted, signified their meaning by certain marks and figures. The serpent held by the female figure refers to _ophiomancy_, the art which the ancients pretended to, of making predictions by serpents. According to the _ophites_, who emanated from the Gnostics, the serpent was instructed in all knowledge, and was the father and author of all the sciences. [Illustration: Divination ring.] The hieroglyphic ring represents a sphinx, the monster described by the poets as having a human face with the body of a bird or quadruped, the paws of a lion, the tail of a dragon, &c. It was said to propose riddles to those it met with, and destroyed those who could not answer them. Upon this they consulted the oracle, to know what should be done. It answered that they could not be delivered until they could solve this riddle: ‘What creature is that which has four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three towards night.’ Œdipus answered that it was a man, who, in his infancy, crawled on all fours, until he was sufficiently strong to walk; then went on two legs, until old age obliged him to use a staff to help and support him. On this the monster is said to have dashed out its brains against a rock. [Illustration: Divination ring.]