a fair lady, as a token of love to a handsome soldier, in the " Miles Gloriosus " of Plautus was also of this class.
The
custom of placing the betrothal or wedding ring upon the fourth finger
seems undoubtedly to owe its origin to the fancy that a special nerve,
or vein, ran directly from this finger to the heart. Macrobius, in his
Saturnalia,2 alludes to the belief in the following words: "
Because of this nerve, the newly betrothed places the ring on this
finger of his spouse, as though it were a representation of the heart."
Macrobius asserts that he derived his information from an Egyptian
priest.
It
has been conjectured that this was not the real source of the custom,
but that in the church service it was usual for the Christian priest to
touch three fingers successively with the ring while saying: " In the
name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," and then to
place it upon the last finger touched. We know that this was the usage
in the bestowal of episcopal rings, and later with wedding rings, but
the express statement cited from the pagan writer Macrobius shows that
in the earlier marriage or betrothal ceremony this custom must have had
an entirely different origin.
During
the reign of George I of England it was not unusual to wear the wedding
ring on the thumb, although it had been placed on the fourth finger at
the marriage > ceremony. Possibly this custom may have
arisen because exceptionally large wedding rings were favored by
fashion at that time. That wedding rings were often worn on the thumb
in the middle of the seventeenth century is proved by the lines from
Samuel Butler's Hudibras quoted on another page.3
Ecclesiastical rituals in France from the eleventh to
* Saturnalia, lib. vii, cap. 18. 8 See page 222.
