Magic Ring - Medieval Romance

Medieval Romance

Medieval storytellers have utilized a number of magical rings in their tales. Merlin, for example, was the victim of a magical finger ring given to him by a young enchantress named Nimue. The magic in the ring caused him to fall in love with her. Merlin then allowed Nimue to imprison him; some versions of the story say in the trunk of a tree, others in a cave or in a stone coffin. Sir Yvain is given a magic ring by a maiden in Chrétien de Troyes twelfth century Arthurian romance The Knight of the Lion. This finger ring can be worn with the stone on the inside, facing the palm, and then it will make the wearer invisible. The Scottish ballads Hind Horn and Bonny Bee Hom both include a magic ring that turns pale when the person who received it has lost the person who gave it.

The fourteenth century Middle English Arthurian romance Sir Perceval of Galles has the hero, Perceval, take a ring from the finger of a sleeping maiden in exchange for his own, and he then goes off on a series of adventures that includes defeating an entire Saracen army single-handedly, in a Land of Maidens. Only near the end of this romance does he learn that the ring he was wearing is a magic ring and that its wearer cannot be killed. Similar rings feature in the fourteenth century medieval romance Sir Eglamour of Artois and the twelfth century Floris and Blancheflour, and in Sir Thomas Malory's tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney, in his fifteenth century epic Le Morte d'Arthur, in which Sir Gareth is given a ring by a damsel who lives in Avalon that will render him invulnerable to losing any blood at a tournament.