" But though these may
be genuine African superstitions, and not such as have been introduced
by the Portuguese, yet it is certain there is no part of Europe to which
they do not equally belong.
[140] Beckman, vol 1, p. 74 to 103.
[141] See Major Long's expedition, vol. 1. p. 226.
CHAPTER XIX.
ON THE ORIGIN AND SUPERSTITIOUS INFLUENCE OP RINGS.
The ancient magicians, among other pretended extraordinary powers of
accomplishing wonderful things by their superior knowledge of the secret
powers of nature, of the virtues of plants and minerals, and of the
motions and influence of the stars, attached no small degree of mystic
importance to rings, the origin of which, their matter and uses,
together with the supposed virtues of the stones set in them, afford a
subject squaring so much with our design, and so deserving of notice
from the curious, that no apology need be made for discoursing on them.
According to the accounts of the heathen mythologists, Prometheus, who,
in the first times, had discovered a great number of secrets, having
been delivered from the charms, by which he was fastened to mount
Caucasus for stealing fire from heaven, in memory or acknowledgment of
the favour he received from Jupiter, made himself of one of those
chains, a ring, in whose collet he represented the figure of part of the
rock where he had been detained--or rather, as Pliny says, set it in a
bit of the same rock, and put it on his finger.
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