Talk:The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual

Setting date
Dear anonymous user,

Can you cite the reason that makes you believe that the setting of this story can be dated? Kelisi 02:50, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

William S. Baring-Gould attached dates to all of the Holmes stories, and decided that The Musgrave Ritual took place on Thursday, October 2, 1879. This is based on its being one of Holmes's earliest adventures, and that he began his detecting in 1877. But he also suggests that the story might be set in 1887, 1888 or 1889. RickK 02:56, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Specification of time of year
"The ritual does not specify what time of the year to measure the shadow of the oak and therefore does not consider that the shadow would be shorter in the winter."


 * only on a few days of the year would the sun set exactly on the tip of the oak AND it's shadow lie on the tip of the elm
 * clearly these few days were both in the time that the butler and Holmes both searched —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrisboote (talk • contribs) 16:39, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Granda TV VErsion
Differences:
 * Watson is in the story
 * Maid body found in the mere
 * Musgrave is older than Holmes; in orginal story Musgrave was a college contemporary of Holmes
 * Plot hole is that the fragments are still in Musgrave custody-after legal bother and a considerable amount of money has been paid; yet the ritual clearly spells out the fragments are to be with the Musgraves only until the monarchy is restored-in other words the fragments are Crown property! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.53.145.50 (talk) 11:54, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Ritual note difficulty
I was interested to read in the article: The story was originally published in the Strand Magazine in May 1893, with illustrations by Sidney Paget. It was later collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The Strand's text of the Ritual did not specify the month in which the shadow of the oak should be measured (the shadow would be longer in winter), but a couplet was added for the Memoirs identifying the month as the "sixth from the first".[2] Someone must have made it clear to Conan Doyle that the shadows of oak and elm would go in different directions as the seasons varied. And so a code was added specifying (pretty clearly) that June was intended. I note the following:

This means that the case investigation must also have taken place in June, though this is no change in the text makes this evident.

The oak is unchanged since the ritual was coded but the elm was cut down decades earlier. Nevertheless, because its full height was known, Holmes is able to establish where its shadow would have been. He uses Euclid's (?) ancient method whereby the height of some object like a pyramid can be inferred very easily by analogy. Simply by placing a small stick near(say) a pyramid and measuring the stick's shadow, then the ratio of the stick's length to its shadow is the same as the pyramid's length to ITS shadow.

The plot hole mentioned in the article, that the butler's scarf was overlooked, is even worse then it sounds. How is that over 200 years, the Musgraves had never thought to investigate what was beneath the flagstone of the cellar?

Moreover, they were not a bright bunch. The ritual is OBVIOUSLY an instruction to find some spot on their grounds, and seek beneath it. It mentions the oak and elm. Ten generations of Musgraves failed to decipher a code which was simpler than many which had been used by pirates.

Lastly, I was repelled by the coldness and severity with which the butler was treated. This man had been with the family for 20 years, and had been much valued for his intelligence and musical abilities. His crime was that, in the course of one night he examined the document of the rite, which the Musgraves had regarded as being a meaningless ritual. For this he is summarily dismissed, ordered to leave the next morning. One would have thought that 20 years service might have seen him to be someone part of the family. But the story shows just how unyeilding British class traditions were. He may have been with them day and night for two decades, but on his first mistake, he is out the door, with no chance of mercy. Myles325a (talk) 10:26, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

plotholes
One plot hole in the story is when Musgrave claims that the entire house had been searched; yet Musgrave is surprised when Brunton's muffler is found tied to the stone slab in the cellar.

=> with regards to this so called "plot hole", They searched the house for a person, not finding him. Not an item, therefore when searching the house for a person, you check the dark cellar but finding no light there you won't search it further. Then again, if searching for a person, you would assume they look through the place for a person. Anyone who's ever heard a noise in his house at night and snuck down to check the place would not check for items, you look for humanoid shapes then move on to the next chamber.--109.132.235.35 (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Another plot hole would seem to be that the pacing out of the directions would have started from the wrong point, as the ritual had been written 200 years prior, so the two trees of which shadows were used to establish the starting point would have grown substantially in that time. J.m.bahr (talk) 03:02, 26 August 2012 (UTC) j.m.bahr


 * This bothered me at first, then I looked it up and most tree species reach a maximum height in less than 100 years and then the tree only grows thicker. The text of the storty states that both trees were very ancient, so they would have been at their maximum natural heights when the ritual was created. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.209.171.0 (talk) 01:59, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

1912 film adaptation
Someone might want to add that this was the first appearance of Holmes on film: http://www.europafilmtreasures.eu/PY/523/see-the-film-the_musgrave_ritual — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.164.10.174 (talk) 18:29, 22 February 2013 (UTC)