The breaking of a ring was of ominous import. Atkinson, in his ‘Memoirs of the Queen of Prussia,’ says: ‘The betrothal of the young couple (Frederic and Sophia Charlotte, first King and Queen of Prussia) speedily followed. I believe it was during the festivities attendant upon this occasion that a ring worn by Frederic, in memory of his deceased wife, with the device of clasped hands, and the motto “_à jamais_,” suddenly broke, which was looked upon as an omen that this union, likewise, was to be of short duration.’ The breaking of a wedding-ring is still regarded in some parts of England as an import that its wearer will soon be a widow. A correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries’ found this superstition current in Essex a few years ago. A man had been murdered in that county, and his widow said: ‘I thought I should soon lose him, for I broke my wedding-ring the other day, and my sister lost her husband after breaking her ring. It is a sure sign’! It was an olden superstition that the bending of the leaves to the right or to the left of the orpine plants, or _Mid-summer men_, as they were called (_Telephium_), would never fail to tell whether a lover was true or false. In an old poem, the ‘Cottage Girl,’ we find:-- Oft on the shrub she casts her eye, That spoke her true love’s secret sigh; Or else, alas, too plainly told Her true love’s faithless heart was cold. In 1801 a small gold ring was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries (found in a ploughed field near Cawood, in Yorkshire) which had for a device two orpine plants joined by a true-love knot, with a motto above: ‘_ma fiance velt_,’ my sweetheart wills, or is desirous. The stalks of the plants were bent to each other, in token that the parties represented by them were to come together in marriage. The motto under the ring was: ‘_Joye l’amour feu_.’ From the form of the letters it appeared to have been a ring of the fifteenth century. The ring conferring divination powers on the wedding-cake is thus alluded to in the ‘St. James’s Chronicle’ (1799):--