The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual - Definition and Overview

Reginald Musgrave, by Sidney Paget in Strand.

The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The story was originally serialised in Strand Magazine in 1893, and appeared later in book form in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Unlike the majority of Holmes stories, The Musgrave Ritual's main narrator is not Doctor Watson, but Sherlock Holmes himself. With Watson providing an introduction, the story-within-a-story is a classic example of a frame tale.

Synopsis

In the story, Holmes recounts to Watson the events arising after a visit from a university acquaintance, Reginald Musgrave. Musgrave visits Holmes after the disappearance of two of his domestic staff, Rachel Howells and Richard Brunton. The pair vanished after Musgrave had dismissed Brunton for secretly reading a family document, the Musgrave Ritual. The Ritual reads:

'Whose was it?'

'His who is gone.'

'Who shall have it?'

'He who will come.'

'Where was the sun?'

'Over the oak.'

'Where was the shadow?'

'Under the elm.'

'How was it stepped?'

'North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and by two, west by one and by one, and so under.'

'What shall we give for it?'

'All that is ours.'

'Why should we give it?'

'For the sake of the trust.'

The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual shares elements with two Edgar Allan Poe tales: The Gold Bug and The Cask of Amontillado.

In 1927, Conan Doyle ranked the story at 11th place on his top 12 Holmes stories list. The story did better in a 1959 chart produced by the Baker Street Journal, ranking 6th out of 10.

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Musgrave Ritual

• Full text of The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual (http://www.bakerstreet221b.de/canon/musg.htm)
• Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (http://sherlock-holmes.classic-literature.co.uk/memoirs-of-sherlock-holmes.asp) - in easy to read HTML format.
• The Musgrave Ritual (http://sherlock-holmes.classic-literature.co.uk/the-musgrave-ritual/) - in easy to read HTML format.
• Free eBook of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9555) at Project Gutenberg (including The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual)