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400 THE MAGIC OP JEWELS AND CHARMS
of
moonstones. At times, indeed, moonstones are used in their place.
Sometimes these panels, or bits and pieces of rock-crystal, are
drilled, diamonds set in platinum are inserted into the drill-holes,
and the ornament is engraved in classic designs of Watteau-like effects.
The
origin of Burmese rubies is tirasi explained in a Burmese legend
current in the region of the Euby Mines. According to this legend, in
the first century of our era three eggs were laid by a female naga, or
serpent; out of the first was born Pyusawti, a king of Pagan ; out of
the second came an Emperor of China, and out of the third were emitted
the rubies of the Euby Mines.41
Dealing
in precious stones was by no means an unusual occupation in Europe more
than four hundred years ago, as is shown by the fact that a certain
Peter, one of the secret agents of PerMn Warbeck, a pretender to the
throne of England in Henry VII's reign, was called in the secret
correspondence of the conspirators, "The Merchant of the Euby." Such
dealers frequently travelled from place to place, and usually offered
their wares to princes and nobles ; hence the statement in a letter
that the Merchant of the Euby "was not able to sell his wares
in Flaunders" might not seem suspicious if the letter were intercepted
and read, although the meaning was that the emissary had been unable
to obtain succor in Flanders for the cause of the pretender.42
Probably this designation also contained a covert allusion to the Eed
Rose of York, for Perkin Warbeck gave himself out to be Eichard, Duke
of York.
A
sixteenth-century traveller, the Portuguese Duarte Barbosa, after
saying that "the rubies grow in India," proceeds to state that those
of finest quality and greatest value
were for the most part gathered in a river called Peygu and
* —__—
'
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β Communication from Taw Sein Ko.
"Archeologia, vol. xxvii, pp. 175, 207. London, 1838.
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