In this mornings Irish Times there is a story about a Cod found off Arklow with a purse in its belly full of Victorian coins.
My mind was immediately filled with memories of the peculiar relationship between our families, both Sile’s and mine, and disappearing engagement rings.
In 1972, when Sile and I decided to get married I went home to announce the engagement to my mother.
“What kind of a ring are you going to get?” was my mother’s first question.
“We aren’t getting engaged” I said scathingly, how Bourgeois I thought, us free hippy spirits wouldn’t dream of being so conventional.
“If you like you could have Granny Daly’s ring “ she said.
All scruples immediately vanished and I accepted with alacrity.
Not only was Granny Daly’s ring a beautiful cluster of diamonds it was also a ring with a history.

When my Granny got married in the 1910’s she moved into a large terraced Victorian house in Blackrock in Cork where she was to spend the rest of her life.
This house had an extensive garden complete with tennis court and large vegetable patch.

Every night as she went to bed she took off her engagement ring and left it on her dressing room table.
One day, not long after her marriage when she went to look for it the following day she found it missing.
Consternation and a thorough house search followed but it was nowhere to be found.
Granny suspected a recently employed maid but nothing was found in her room, notwithstanding she was dismissed anyway.

The searches revealed nothing and eventually the case was closed.

Twenty five years later , in the mid thirties, a gardener was digging potatoes for the family in the vegetable patch and he came across an old rusty alarm clock, one with large clappers on top leading into the works inside.
Before he threw it on the rubbish tip he gave it a shake and, intrigued by the rattle decided to look inside.
In the middle of the works he found, you have guessed it, Granny’s engagement ring.

How it got there was of course anyone’s guess but eventually a putative scenario was put together.

The alarm clock had been the one that stood on the Granny’s table at the time of the robbery . The untrustworthy maid had seen her opportunity to steal the ring, shoved it through the opening at the top with the thought of reclaiming it later, but was then fired before she got the chance.
The clock, in the fullness of time had been retired and ended up thrown by a child into the garden.

It caused such a stir that a piece was written about the ring in the Cork Examiner, a cutting which my mother always kept, along with the ring which she inherited, in her jewel box.

When Sile brought the ring home to her family and told them the story her mother was particularly intrigued.
It appears she too had lost her ring.

When she was first married they lived in Multyfarnham Co. Westmeath.
Every week Sile’s mother used to walk along the banks of a stream to a farm for fresh eggs for the children.

Her engagement ring was a little loose, and, afraid that she might loose it, she used to pop it into the purse in which she used to carry the money for the eggs.
On this particular day she wrapped the ring in a ten shilling note in her purse and set off for the eggs.
When she got there the purse and the ring were gone.
Despite searching all along the path she never succeeded in finding it.

Fast forward another twenty five years and Sile’s mother is watching Garda Patrol on the tele.
The programme on this particular night finished on a little whimsical note.
“A large salmon has been caught in Lough Derravaragh and when opened up its stomach was found to contain a purse and inside this was a pound note wrapped around an engagement ring”
Now Sile’s mum knew that the stream she walked by flowed into Lough Derravaragh decided not to claim the purse because
she reckoned it could never have survived all this time and that –to her crucially- the ring was said to be wrapped in a pound note instead of the ten shilling note she knew she had wrapped it in.

Maybe she was right, when we made enquiries after she told us the story the Garda told us that all found items were auctioned off after a few years so, now, we will never know.

Strange coincidence to think of both family rings being lost, but stranger still that one of them was afterwards found.
I never look at the ring on Sile’s finger without remembering both stories.