What a romance of fact and fiction centers about the wedding-ring ! From time immemorial the ring has been a symbol of both power and confidence. Among the Assyrians, Hebrews, Greeks, and other ancients it was used as a seal for signing orders, and thus for ages it has been a token of binding authority. And, then, what symbolism! Its gold signifies refined purity of love; its endlessness promises eternal love; its roundness hints of the round flowing of love and also of single things it stands for the "oneness" of the couple; its exactness of fit is a reminder of the harmony in the tempers and tastes of the two; the price takes the place of the ancient purchase money; as it neither slips nor hurts, so husband and wife should never wound nor evade each other. If the ring be lost it is a warning that the husband's love will soon pass away; if broken, that he will soon die.
"As your wedding-ring wears
You'll outlive your cares."
How long it has been considered a necessity for weddings cannot be told. Tradition claims that the first one was made of iron and adamant by Tubal Cain for a man named Prometheus; the iron, thought Cain, signified lastingness and the adamant perfect concord. The early Romans commonly used a plain iron ring; while the poorer English, even in the nineteenth century, used the ring of the church keys. Even yet the poverty stricken Irishman who cannot buy one rents it, and tradesmen in the smaller towns make no mean income by keeping three or four in stock. What will a man not do in times of dire necessity! Long after the Norman Conquest peasants used circles of rushes or sedges, and eighteenth century Fleet Street parsons, ready for any emergency, constantly carried brass curtain rings in their pockets. The Puritans forbade the use of any ring, as savoring of paganism; but whoever successfully dictated public tastes?
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| "Old pictures of the Virgin Mary, such as Raphael's "Espousal," show the band on the right." |
Oftentimes, too, at the espousal a silver coin was blessed and broken, and a piece given each partner to be hung over the heart; and this, also, took unto itself a sacredness and a power to drive away trouble and cure disease.
Among the wealthy a French invention, called a gemma, gimmal, or geminal ring, constructed with a clasp so as to become one band or several, took the place of the broken coin, and when brought together at the wedding by the couple and the witnesses, who each took a portion at the espousal, was found to be engraved with a rhyme incomplete without every small golden band. This is the idea so beautifully expressed in Father Tabb's The Half -Ring Moon:
"Over the sea, over the sea,
My love he is gone to a far countrie;
But he brake a golden ring with me
The pledge of his faith to be.
"Over the sea, over the sea,
He comes no more from the far countrie;
But at night, where the new moon loves to be,
Hangs the half of a ring for me."
These rhymes or "posies" — what marvellous creations in verse! An English bishop engraved on the ring of his fourth wife: 'If I survive I'll make them five."
Bishop Bull of St. Davids chose as the motto for his wife's ring the words: "Bene parere, par ere, par are det mihi Deus," all of which means "God make me prolific, obedient, and sedulous." Most modern brides would have returned it with thanks and regrets.
The village poet (who also constructed poetry for tombstones and candy hearts) often reached heights of eloquence in such efforts as "I will be yours, While life endures." or "It you deny, Then sure I die." and "I did commit no act of folly, When I married my sweet Molly."
Today we invariably put the ring on the third finger of the left hand. Why this choice? It has not always been customary; old pictures of the Virgin Mary, such as Raphael's "Espousal," show the band on the right. There is a definite reason for the modern convention. Besides being less used and therefore less exposed to danger, and being the weaker finger and therefore symbolizing the wife's dependence, this third digit of the left hand has been supposed from the days of the Egyptians until this hour to be connected directly with the heart by a vein called the "vena amoris. " This finger, thought the ancients, resisted disease longest; gout never attacked it until the heart had become affected, and then the pain in the finger was the death sign; the alchemists believed it the quickest to give warning of poisoning, and they habitually stirred their potions with it. It was indeed the "finger of life." To this day the mountaineers of Virginia and Tennessee wear a special ring on it to drive away rheumatism, and stoutly assert that the process gives relief. But whether the ring were on the right or left hand made little difference before Shakespeare's day; for it was considered decidedly immodest in any unmarried person to wear such an ornament unless he were a judge, a physician, or a State authority. Holiday 1919
The modern way to wear wedding rings.
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