II. Open your gates as wide as I, [high?] And let King George's horses by; For the night is dark and we cannot see, But thread your long needle and sew.
III. Thread the tailor's needle, The tailor's blind, so he can't see; So open the gates as wide as wide, And let King George and his lady pass by.
--Bocking, Essex (_Folk-lore Record_, iii. 170).
IV. Thread my grandmother's needle, Thread my grandmother's needle; It is too dark we cannot see To thread my grandmother's needle.
V. Thread the needle, Thread the needle, Nine, nine, nine, Let King George and I pass by.
VI. Open the gates as wide as wide, And let King George go through with his bride; It is so dark, we cannot see To threaddle the tailor's needle.
--Parish _Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect_.
VII. Brother Jack, if ye were mine, I would give you claret wine; Claret wine's gude and fine-- Through the needle-e'e, boys!
VIII. Through the needle-e'e, boys, One, two, three, boys.
IX. Hop my needle, burn my thread, Come thread my needle, Jo-hey.
X. Come thread a long needle, come thread, The eye is too little, the needle's too big.
XI. Thread the needle thro' the skin, Sometimes out and sometimes in.
--Warwickshire, Northall's _Folk Rhymes_, 397.
XII. Open the gates as wide as the sky, And let King George and his lady go by.
--Ellesmere, Burne's _Shropshire Folk-lore_, p. 321.
(_b._) The children stand in two long rows, each holding the hands of the opposite child, the two last forming an arch. They sing the lines, and while doing so the other children run under the raised arms. When all have passed under, the first two hold up their hands, and so on again and again, each pair in turn becoming the arch. Mrs. Lloyd (Harpenden version) says the two first hold up a handkerchief, and the children all run under, beginning with the last couple. In the London version (Miss Dendy) the "last line is called out in quite different tones from the rest of the rhyme. It is reported to have a most startling effect." The Warwickshire version is played differently. The players, after passing under the clasped hands, all circle or wind round one of their number, who stands still.
(_c._) In some cases the verse, "How many miles to Babylon?" is sung before the verses for "Thread the needle," and the reference made (_ante_, vol. i., p. 238) to an old version seems to suggest the origin of the game. This, at all events, goes far to prove that the central idea of the game is not connected with the sewing needle, but with an interesting dance movement, which is called by analogy, Thread the needle. It is, however, impossible to say whether the verses of this game are the fragments of an older and more lengthy original, which included both the words of "How many miles to Babylon" and "Thread the needle," or whether these two were independent games, which have become joined; but, on the whole, I am inclined to think that "Thread the needle," at all events, is an independent game, or the central idea of an independent game, and one of some antiquity.
