444 FISH OF MOSES—JONAH—SOLOMON’S RING 
write The Song of Songs), which he likens to the pools of 
Hesbon ? 
A devil named Sakhar, the Talmud goes on, coming in the 
shape of Solomon, obtained the ring from Amina, and by 
virtue of its possession sat on the throne in Solomon’s guise. 
After forty days the devil flew away, and threw the ring into 
the sea. The signet was immediately swallowed by a fish, 
which on being caught was given to Solomon. The ring was 
found in its stomach, and he, who without its credentials had 
been compelled to beg for bread and from his appearance being 
changed by the devil had been regarded as a preposterous 
pretender, ‘‘ by this means recovered his kingdom, and taking 
Sakhar and tying a great stone to his neck, threw him into the 
sea of Tiberias.” ! 
In another version 2—very probable because more character- 
istic of Solomon, in that he annexes another wife—the King 
after the loss of his throne became a cook in the palace of a 
foreign sovereign, married his master’s daughter, bought a fish 
with the ring inside, and so recovered his realm. 
In another legend fish play, if not a historical, yet no 
small part in connection with a famous historical character. 
St. Brandan in his travels encountered Judas Iscariot, whose 
allotted punishments at any rate lacked not monotony, for 
after each spell of pitch and sulphur he was condemned to sit 
on a desolate rock in the frozen regions. To the query as to 
the purpose of a cloth bandage worn round the head, Judas 
made answer that it was an effectual charm against the 
ferocious fishes among which he was often doomed to be thrown, 
for at its sight they lost their will to bite. He had obtained 
1 Sale, Suva 38 of the Koran, gives, as regards the incident, references to: 
(A) The Talmud, probably to the treatise Gittin, pp. 68, u, b. See Jew. Encycl., 
xi. 448, and cf. p. 4436. (B) En Jacob, Pt. ii—probably to a work of this title, 
Well of Jacob, a collection of legends and parables by Jacob ben Solomon ibn 
Chabib from the Babylonian Talmud, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1684-85). (C) Yalkut 
in lib. Reg., p. 182—this is a collection of expositions of the O.T. books and 
first printed in 1521. Solomon’s throwing of the demon ‘seems quite justifiable, 
if Sakhar and Asmodeus were under different names one and the same, 
for from Gittin, 68 b, we learn that the demon, after swallowing Solomon, 
“spat him a distance of 400 miles,” a feat in ballistics, or ‘‘ the art of propelling 
heavy bodies,” which surpasses even the German long-range gun, 
2 Jewish Ency., xi. 441. 
