The following notice of an advertisement is extracted from an Oxford paper of 1860, and republished in ‘Notes and Queries’ (3rd series, vol. x. p. 19): ‘IMPORTANT NOTICE!--The largest cake ever made in Oxford, weighing upward of 1,000 pounds, and containing 30 gold wedding and other rings, in value from 7_s._ 6_d._ to Two Guineas each! To be seen for sale at No. 1 Queen Street, Oxford, from Thursday, December 27th, until Saturday, January 5th, 1861, when it will be cut out at the low price of 1_s._ 2_d._ per pound (this quality frequently sold for wedding-cake). Persons at a distance desirous of purchasing may rely upon prompt attention being given to their favours. ‘N.B.--J. Boffin will feel obliged if persons obtaining the gold rings will favour him with their names.’ A wide-spread superstition or fancy prevails with regard to the use of a gold ring at weddings. Mr. Wood, in his ‘Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries,’ observes ‘that the Irish peasantry have a general impression that a marriage without the use of a gold ring is not legal. At a town in the south-east of Ireland, a person kept a few gold wedding-rings for hire, and when parties who were too poor to purchase a ring of the necessary precious metal were about to be married, they obtained the loan of one, and paid a small fee for the same, the ring being returned to the owner immediately after the ceremony. In some places it is common for the same ring to be used for many marriages, which ring remains in the custody of the priest.’ Mr. Jeaffreson says: ‘I have known labourers of the eastern counties of England express their faith in the mystic efficacy of the golden arrabo in language that in the seventeenth century would have stirred Puritan auditors to denounce the Satanic bauble and its worshippers with godly fervour.’ Pegge, in his ‘Curialia,’ alludes to the superstition that a wedding-ring of gold rubbed on a stye upon the eyelid was a sovereign remedy, but it required to be rubbed _nine_ times. Mr. W. R. S. Ralston, in his ‘Songs of the Russians,’ mentions some curious superstitions in connexion with rings in that country. A custom exists in Russia of catching rain that falls during a thunderstorm in a basin, at the bottom of which rain has been placed. In the Riazan Government, water that has been dropped through a wedding-ring is supposed to have certain merits as a lotion; and at a Little-Russian marriage the bride is bound to give the bridegroom to drink from a cup of wine in which a ring has been put. From the mention of a ring made in the ‘Dodola Songs,’ and in others referring to storm and rain, it is supposed that a golden ring, in mythical language, is to be taken as a representation of the lightning’s heavenly gold.