Hi Deadlock,
Before I get to the "X" part of the ring I would say it was dated somewhere between 1680-1720. Now spelling errors are quite common on these rings, and could have been misspelt at any time, but it is my opinion that as both the words CHOICE and LIKE are misspelt, then the ring probably dates too around 1700 and backwards. You can appreciate why they chose to use the letter Y in choice since back in that period and going further back in the 1600s they often wrote the words how they sounded rather than how they were spelt. So if you say the word JOY for instance, you can see why then they wrote CHOY as they both sound the same, and the same goes for using the S at the end, since the letters CE and S both sound the same also. And I think that as the word like was misspelt using the letter Y, then this ring is again probably pre 1700, but again this is all a matter of opinion.
Now onto the mysterious letter "X" or rather ")-(". I may be wrong here but this is probably not a letter, but rather a symbol, and maybe is the sign of the Zodiac for Pisces! Take a look at the link below. As far as being a letter I don't think this is the case. If indeed it does represent PISCES, then that is quite interesting since it could mean several things, perhaps the person that wore it was that Zodiac, or maybe it was give and/or the people married during the time of the Zodiac, which for Pisces is between 20 Feb - 20 March?
Also I was thinking that the ")-(" symbol could mean this, nothing to do with the Zodiac but rather the following. If we break the symbol up into three, we have two halves of a circle and a line. So each half represents the man and woman and the line joins the two, symbolising marriage, which is plausible I think.
http://www.pysanky.info/Brody_Pysanka/Zodiac.htmlHope this helped in some way.
Cheers, Jon
