Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/294

 286 stories being variants of the Cinderella story should be known by some standard title. Then again there is the terminology for incidents in folk-tales. The incidents in folk-tales have been neglected, while the form, plot, and construction have been studied for years. But we cannot study the incidents of folk-tales until we get a proper terminology. I should like to see compiled (and to get it done by co-operation with Members of the Society, just as the tabulation is being done) an index of folk-tale incidents; but such a task is hopeless unless first of all a common terminology is agreed upon.

I have just thrown these few thoughts together with the ope that by discussion we may arrive at something like a process of settlement; and if no one else comes forward with any definition I will gladly commence with mine.

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Threading the Needle at Ripon Cathedral.—(Ante, p. 253.)—There is a crypt beneath Ripon Minster which is believed by those best competent to judge to be of early Saxon architecture. In this crypt, connecting one part with another in a way not easy to describe without a plan, is a passage raised above the ground. The late Mr. John Richard Walbran, in a paper which he read before the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Architectural Societies on September 14, 1858, says that "the easternmost niche in the north wall has, at some period subsequent to its original construction, been perforated and enlarged through the wall to the passage behind, so as to form that renowned place of ordeal to which tradition tells us that those ladies who loved 'not wisely but too well' were occasionally subjected The purposes to which this very singular place has been successively applied are not certainly ascertained, though there seems no doubt but that originally it was intended to serve as a place of retirement, humiliation, penance, and prayer. Camden was told, within memory of the Reformation, that women were drawn through 'the Needle' as an ordeal of their chastity—the culprit being 'miraculously' detained; or, as Fuller wittily observed, 'they pricked their credits who could not thread the needle.' As far, however, as the contraction of space was concerned, the frailest of the frail might have rioted in intrigue unconvicted. A conspicuous reluctance to assume the necessary prostrate position was, I apprehend, the real difficulty."—Reports of