Note 9.6 — Chapter VIII · THE LIFE-TOKEN IN TALE AND CUSTOM.

Among other articles of property, a rosary, or a ring, is the favourite. Parwez, in the Arabian Nights, gives his sister a string of one hundred pearls: while they run loose on the string, he is living. The rosary also appears in a modern Arab folktale from Egypt (already cited), in Catalonia, in Brittany, and in tales obtained at Troyes in Champagne and at Mantua.9.6 In Arab tales the ring tightens round the finger when the giver of the ring suffers mishap.9.7 In a Vlach ballad it rusts.9.8 More usually the stone it contains changes colour. This is the case in the old French romance of Flores et Blanchefleur; and it reappears among the Basques, in Italy, and, though rarely, in Russia.10.1 In Sicily the ring is originally the gift of a fairy, or rather a Fate, at the birth of the three children borne by the heroine of a variant of The Two Sisters who envied their Cadette.10.2 The virtues ascribed of old to precious stones were many; and we should have had cause for surprise if we had not found gems in the list of life-tokens.