ssessed was an emerald
signet-ring, and this accordingly he resolved to sacrifice. So,
manning a galley, he rowed out to the sea, and threw the ring
away into the waste of the waters. Some five or six days after
this, a fisherman came to the palace and made the king a present
of a very fine fish that he had caught. This the servants
proceeded to open, when, to their surprise, they came upon a
ring, which on examination proved to be the very ring which had
been cast away by the king their master. (See Herodotus, book
iii.)

Among the many legends that have clustered round the memory of
Solomon, there is one which reads very much like an adaptation
of this classic story. The version the Talmud gives of this
story is quoted in another part of this Miscellany (chap. vi.
No. 8, note), but in Emek Hammelech, fol. 14, col. 4, we have
the legend in another form, with much amplitude and variety of
detail, of which we can give here only an outline. When the
building of the Temple was finished, the king of the demons
begged Solomon to set him free from his service, and promised in
return to teach him a secret he would be sure to value. Having
cajoled Solomon out of possession of his signet-ring, he first
flung the ring into the sea, where it was swallowed by a fish,
and then taking up Solomon himself, he cast him into a foreign
land some four hundred miles away, where for three weary long
years he wandered up and down like a vagrant, begging his bread
from door to door. In the course of his rambles he came to Mash
Kemim, and was so fortunate as to be appointed head cook at the
palace of the king of Ammon (Ana Hanun, see 1 Kings xii. 24;
LXX.). While employed in this office, Naama, the king's daughter
(see 1 Kings xiv. 21, 31, and 2 Chron. xii. 13), fell in love
with him, and, determining to marry him, eloped with him for
refuge to a distant land. One day as Naama was preparing a fish
for dinner, she found in it a ring, and this turned cut to be
the very ring which the king of the demons had flung into the
sea, and the loss of which had bewitched the king out of his
power and dominion. In the recovery of the ring the king both
recovered himself and the throne of his father David.

The occurrence of a fish and a ring on the arms of the city of
Glasgow memorializes a legend in whic