I Will Take the Ring

Walking to school I spied a silvery circle on the sidewalk. Curious, I bent down and picked it up. It was a ring. Battered silver plate eroded enough that the copper beneath had worn through at the edges.  In the best traditions of one of my favorite genres I stuck it in my pocket.  Regrettably the rest of my walk to school was uneventful. No riddle games at all.*  Upon further inspection, I discovered a Mysterious Inscription: in deeply
etched letters, it read "DATUMAMORE. AD DEFENDUM."  It more or less fit on my right thumb, or the first finger of either hand, though it attempted to slip off unexpectedly.

Sensing Latin, I googled the phrase when I got to school.  I was right.  It was not the Black Speech. (Sigh.) Instead it was one of those instances, where people use Latin to say something sappy that they might otherwise be too embarrassed to say.  In this case, apparently,  "Given with love, for your protection."  Which is nice, although one wonders how it ended up lying on the sidewalk, clearly having been run over a couple of times. Some protection.


*The answer to "what has it got in its pocketses?" is lengthy: knife, keys, head lamp, plastic dinosaur, phone, change, hands, pen, hand kerchief, and sometimes a hat.