P.S. A friend suggests, could the game have come from the Crusades?
A line of players, the longer the better, hold hands and one end of the
line, which thus becomes almost a circle, runs and drags the rest of the
line after it through the arch made by the uplifted arms of the first
couple of the other end of the line--a process nearly enough resembling
_threading a needle_. There are subsequent evolutions by which each
couple becomes in succession the _eye of the needle_.