Richie,
SBG is well-known for embellishing stories and it was common at the time to put all sorts of antiquarian romantic twists on narratives. The evidence shown in all other versions are that the balls are golden and without corroborating evidence SBG's theories must be taken, like so many others of the period, with a pinch of salt.

I'm sure there must be learned studies of this in more recent years and I'll see if I can find any.